better come on into my kitchen

I haven't asked M exactly what she was thinking here, but I'm almost sure what Yoshimura-san, the site foreman is thinking: "Please don't make any changes. Please don't ask me to make the sink bigger, or smaller, or higher or lower. Please accept everything the way it is."

But we're perfectly happy with the kitchen. The counter top is 10cm higher than usual, which is something I begged for, since I already have a permanent bend in my vertebrae thanks to years of low sinks.

During the open house, a number of the grandmothers of the neighborhood came by, and spent a very long time going over every bit of the house. Most of them were about as high as my chest, yet every one of them immediately noticed the height of the sink and gushed and gawed over it. Which makes me think that the bent-over grandmothers all over the country are actually much taller, but have shrunk after endless hours at low sinks.

There's a flimsy partition that comes down out of the ceiling, that is only there as a bureaucratic "let's pretend." Every room with an open flame is supposed to have a divider from the ceiling separating it from other rooms. Well, when the inspector comes in a few days, we will go through a whole pantomime with him and us pretending that it's a solid piece of wall. Then they'll pull this down and restore the openness of the room. It's the same reason we won't install the wood stove until after his departure, so I guess he'll also have to ignore the stack of firewood that is just outside the window.