Only the room at the back has a high ceiling. The lanes of Nishijin are lined with oriyadate townhouses, a plan in which the street side is living space and the weaving room sits at the rear under a raised roof. A tall loom needs the height; the floor was also set lower than the rest of the house to hold humidity, because dry silk breaks. So both the height and the depth of that room were determined by the dimensions of the loom rather than by anyone's idea of how a house should be arranged.

At the textile hall there are weaving demonstrations and displays of obi, and you can stand close enough to see the moment when the warp separates and the weft passes through it, which happens faster than the description suggests. This is the north-west of the city, densely served by buses. Oriyadate houses come onto the market from time to time, and some are bought by people who intend to live in the front and work in the back, exactly as the plan intends.

Walk here and you still hear looms from inside the houses, without being able to tell which house. The sound is low and travels through the floor, so the whole building resonates rather than the machine alone. When two neighbouring houses are working at once, the noise loses its source somewhere in the lane, and the impression is of a district sounding rather than a workshop. That Nishijin is a weavers' quarter is something you establish by ear several minutes before the architecture confirms it, and on a quiet afternoon the ear is the only instrument that will tell you which houses are still working.