What is "tatami"

Usage examples of "tatami".

It was a high throw and a cruel one, for even with the breakfall and the straw-packed tatami mats she came down on her back with an impact that shook the floor and drove the breath from her body.

Besides holding in our own scents, the room smelled like fresh straw because of the new tatami and the ryokan in the ceiling.

It never occurred to him that there was no money to buy all the food and saké and lacquerware and tatamis that such a visit, by custom, demanded.

The paper shoji doors slid open to reveal yellow tatami mats on the floor and a lacquer table with zabuton pillows arranged around it.

Hiraga left, keeping his head on his tatami to hide the gnashing of his few remaining broken teeth, wanting to humble Hiraga, make him sweat, telling him, not sorry at all: oh so sorry, your late whore Koiko was implicated in the plot, so was your trained female assassin and wife-to-be Sumomo who had her head chopped off too, and your shishi supporter Meikin, mama-san to the most important men in Yedo--even Gyokoyama leaders--is not long for this earth because we surmise Yoshi knows all this too.

On either side and around the back were steplike risers, each also covered with tatami.

For a long time he contemplated the figure on the tatami, and as he did so his muscles began to lose their relaxedness.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Hiroshi Shimada, kneeling on a fibrous tatami, clad in a kimono of ash gray field and smoke wheels, directed his wakizashi toward the muscled ridge of his lower belly, slashing left to right, then upward, his body quivering with effort, control, and face.

Doctor Gempaku's study was simple and silent, tatami mats on the floor, a low table spread with papers, two scrolls hung on the wall, a framed photograph of tancho-zuru, the Japanese red-crested crane.

The floor was bare tatami except for my sleeping futon and a single chest near the door that held my rucksack, few food items, beer mug, the rebreathers I'd brought from the ship, and my climbing gear: there was nothing to trip over.

The sensei of this dojo was sitting at the kamiza—the upper seat—of the aikido mat which was made up of a series of tatami of uncovered rice straw padding.

They sat on opposite sides of the room with the break in the tatami between them as was customary between host and guest, sensei and pupil, sipping weak tea, leaves that had obviously been used more than once.

Had it been Akiko, his pupil, who had sat before him across the tatami, speaking of mundane matters, hiding her intent with what Kyoki, the madman, had taught her so that the sensei felt only the glow of her wa, and was thus put off his guard?

And though it had been the honorable thing to do, though Nangi had had no choice but to comply with his sempai's wishes, still he was ashen as he stared at the bloody blade, his friend and surrogate father's head on the tatami.

Without his support, it swayed and fell to one side, the pink drool staining the tatami on which Tsutsumu knelt.