How Japan Changes You

When you live in a place like Japan for long enough, it inevitably starts to change you. First it’s the little things, like the inability to eat a meal without first saying “Itadakimasu!” (literally meaning “I am about to receive the gift of this food”), or politely turning your headlights down to “park” at intersections to keep from blinding the driver across from you. Before you know it you’re bowing to people while talking on the phone, you can’t remember your weight or shoe size as measured back home and you find yourself taking a long time to get to the point while talking to anyone. The other day my son asked me how they measure the area of rooms in America, and I vaguely recalled there being a something called “square feet” or “square meters” that I’d known about once. Japan, of course, uses that oh-so-traditional unit of measurement known as the tatami mat, and the size of a room is always expressed in how many tatami would fit inside, even if it’s a traditional Western room with wooden flooring. A 6-jo (6-mat) room is a good sized space for one or two people to sleep in, while a 4 1/2 mat room (called yojo-han) is what the cramped rooms poor college students live in are called. After being here for so long I can perceive spaces in Japanese mats pretty accurately, but I have no idea how much 1200 square feet would be.

Tatami mats are used to specify room sizes in Japan.