The overhead crossbeams, installed between the columns at a height of slightly over six feet, are similar to the columns in diameter and appearance. The ceiling of the rooms is roughly two feet above the crossbeams, or _kamoi_, with the intervening space usually filled either by a vertical open wooden latticework, the _ramma_, or a plaster-and-board combination, the _nageshi_. On exterior walls of the _ramma_ is ordinarily a solid extension of the _shoji_ which inhibits air flow from the outside. The _kamoi_, _nageshi_, and _ramma _have a structural as well as aesthetic obligation; they are the only solid lateral supports between the upright columns. The ceiling itself is a light wood latticework over which has been laid a platform of thin boards still in their natural state, as is all the woodwork. Visitors enter through the _genkan _portico, where street shoes are replaced by soft-soled slippers, to prevent scratches on the exposed wooden veranda and hallways. At the entrance to a _tatami_-carpeted room, the slippers too are relinquished, and host and guests are both in stocking feet, a state that encourages familiarity. The reception room is empty as a cell, and as it basks in the diffuse light of the _shoji_, it seems suspended in time--heedless of the season. The only furniture may be a small central table around which guests and host seat themselves on square cushions. Or perhaps there are lamps with rice-paper shades, one or two knee-high chests of drawers, and if the weather requires it, one or more charcoal braziers, either a small moveable hibachi for hand warming or a larger heater sunk into a center recess in the flooring, often beneath the table, or both. The purpose of these is apparently more symbolic than functional, for they do little to influence the temperature in the paper-walled rooms. Arrangements for summer cooling are equally metaphysical; the _shoji _are simply thrown open in hopes of snaring wayward breezes, whose meager cooling is enhanced psychologically by the tinkle of wind bells hung in the verandas.