夫：ちょっと、寒いからふすま閉めてくれる？
妻：ふすまはあなたの目と鼻の先ですよ。自分で閉めればいいのに。
Me to Hana no Saki
Otto: Chotto, samui kara fusuma shimete kureru?
Tsuma: Fusuma wa anata no me to hana no saki desuyo. Jibun de shimereba ii no ni.
Husband: Hey, it's a bit chilly. How about closing the sliding door?
Wife: The door's right in front of your nose. Why can't you just close it yourself?
Me to hana no saki is an idiom used to indicate that the distance between two points is very short. In English it is translated as, "to be within a stone's throw of/from," "to be within earshot," or, as in the example, "to be right in front of one's nose." The husband is sitting right next to the sliding door and yet asks his wife to close it. She grumbles, "Anata no me to hana no saki nano ni (And to think that the door is right in front of your nose)," but still gets up and closes it for him.
Have you ever lived in a Japanese-style house? The tatami-mat rooms probably had fusuma (sliding doors or partitions) and shooji (paper-sliding doors). Shooji are used in windows and doorways facing outside and allow the light in. Fusuma are used inside the house as dividers between rooms and though opaque are often decorated with fusumae (a picture drawn on a fusuma), a unique Japanese invention. Though the paper used in fusuma originated in China, the custom of decorating the doors with pictures first developed in Japan. The pictures are drawn such that they appear only when all the doors are closed, i.e., when the doors are open the entire picture cannot be seen.
Japanese houses of late have become quite Western. Indeed, it's not hard to find a house which has neither shoji nor fusuma. How unfortunate that these natural arts are disappearing from Japanese homes. This week's conversation could never occur in such a home. By the way, during the winter a room can really get cold with the fusuma open.
"Hey, where did you put my glasses?" is a common complaint of Japanese husbands. "Anata no me to hana no saki ni aru no ni, mienai'n desu ka (They're right in front of your nose. Can't you see them)?" Turns out the husband's glasses are on the table right in front of him.
Imagine you are someplace unfamiliar and you ask, "Where's Z Hospital?" If the hospital is nearby, the answer might be, "Z byooin nara, me to hana no saki desu yo (Z Hospital? It's just a stone's throw from here)." You might wonder, of course, just how far this actually is. Indeed, the meaning of me to hana no saki varies from person to person. For some people it means a 2, 3-minute walk. For others it means about 10 minutes. I once asked a taxi driver how far a place was and he said it was "just a stone's throw (me to hana nosaki no kyori)." It was a 15-minute walk! Thatkind of distance in noway qualifies as "a stone's throw (me to hana nosaki ni aru nado, tondemonai) " The room has warmed up.
Hey, honey, open up the fusuma " I wonder how the husband will respond to his wife's request.