Viewing page 29 of 240

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

SLIDING DOORS are especially nice when a person has his hands full and has no doorknob to turn or door to swing open. He merely eases his shoulder against the door and it slides on back.

The Japanese sliding door, called shoji, is a simple thing. Over its wooden framework is pasted paper, and the paper must be changed at least once a year. The portal is rather flimsy but it performs wonders in preserving the heat of the room and spiking the ventilation.

They are not the sort of doors to have around, however, when throwing a biiru party. (Biiru sounds like and is beer. But this beer is usually Nippon, Asahi, or Kirin, and it comes in large economy-sized bottles.) When the serviceman falls against a Japanese door, it isn't he who suffers; it is the door. Sticks splinter. Paper windows flap right out. In short, all hell breaks loose.

But the GI gets used to the sliding doors and if he is a frequent visitor to places Japanese, he forgets the feel of a doorknob in his hand. And back Stateside, he believes that swinging doors shouldn't swing at all - they should slide.

24