Densho Digital Repository - Katsugo Miho Interview I (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1022-1-9)

<Begin Segment 9>

MN: And then later on, when your family became owners of the Miho Hotel...

KM: We lived in the back side.

MN: What was that like? Describe it for us, your living quarters.

KM: In the front of the hotel, we also, in the very beginning, I remember we had a hat store. We sold hats for a while. And then there was a corridor, there was an office, and then a corridor. And then the corridor and the kitchen was next to the corridor. And then we had kind of an open space where we had orchids plants and all kinds of plants, that was our, so-called agricultural spot. And then, further down, was the living quarters. Past the kitchen was the living quarters, and we had a bathhouse, a big ofuro, where in the beginning we used to burn wood. And a lot of my job was to make the water hot every day for the people to take a bath. And a shower and a big concrete... in the beginning it was wood, regular ofuro where three or four people could take a bath at one time easily. And the living quarters was in the back. And the living quarters had tatami. You had to step up into the tatami, and the tatami was probably one, two, three, four, five, maybe seven or eight tatami room, and that's where our living room was. And there was one small storeroom in the back, one small study room for my older brother Katsuro, used to have a special room for his studying over there.