We took several hours at our last meeting with TwoStyle to fix the location, size and shape of the windows of the entire house. We've been dreaming of a bay window for sometime now, and collected a bunch of inspiring photos like this one for instance. Lovely and so inviting! We'd love to be able to recreate that kind of look in our home. Of course, the view from our window will not be as beautiful as on some of those magazine pictures... We started with the entrance, and decided to put a bay window there! The bay will start at 43cm from the floor, so normal chair height, and will protrude for about 35cm, giving us ample space to sit to put on our boots or to place our shopping bags while we change shoes. By the way, everyone who's been to Japan knows that custom dictates a change of shoes upon entering the house. This is not standard custom back home, but we are totally for it, given that we don't want to damage our beautiful wooden floors...
Shoe and coat storage space at the entrance was a problem we had to revisit because we noticed that the new plans included much less space than we had previously anticipated. That's because we hadn't thought about wall thickness taking up precious space there... The plans currently show walls of standard thickness (13.5cm) throughout the house, but we learned that walls only had to be that thick at certain key areas. We will get a plan of those key points next time. So at the entrance, the wall next to the stairs going to the 2F can be trimmed down to 6.5cm (half-wall), giving us an extra few cm to store our shoes... Not much more, but still, we'll take it! The cabinets will be 45cm deep, so big enough to store two pairs of shoes sideways. We wanted to make sure the doors wouldn't take up some of that precious space, so we double-checked usable space or 有効 (ゆうこう = Yuukou), a very practical word we quickly added to our long home building-related vocabulary list... So, various calculations and discussions later, we ended up agreeing on two 60cm wide closets and one 35cm wide closet. All of our shoes, coats, hats, gloves and umbrellas will have to fit in there no matter what, 'cause we don't want to see anything hanging from the walls or sitting on the floor in the entrance....
So back to our windows, we opted for several French-style up-down windows, but it just occurred to us that we could perhaps have arched windows to add light and appeal. These photos are ideas we hope to be able to incorporate. One displays a complete arch and the other has a more peculiar sort of square arch shape; both are lovely. But, we need to check prices, of course. We know next to nothing about windows, but we want something pretty that allows us to enjoy as much light as possible, so we definitely want Yakushiji-san to give us his expert advice on the choices we've made so far. 
Hubby was adamant about having a bay window seat in the dining room, a choice I totally agreed with. Again, what is great is that this bay window will provide ample sitting space without counting toward our total square meter coverage. Just for comfort, we decided not to start the window right at the level of the seat, but to have it continue for about 40cm, providing a back, just like in this image. This way, we get a good view of the outside without too much exposure... We now need to find a nice cushion to soften the touch and this bay window will be an ideal place to read or just gaze out. 
We had to restrain ourselves not to place bay windows everywhere! We did place one in the kitchen and another one in our bedroom, but smaller and higher up from the floor, to serve as shelves. As I leafed through my Ikea catalog yesterday, I noticed an image of beautiful bay windows in the living room, serving as book shelves... So sorry, Yakushiji-san, but some changes might still be in order with the windows in the living room-study area! Let's discuss that and a million other things when we meet next week!
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