Mystery Solved

As you may have noticed in previous entries, we went through a panic that our furniture wasn't going to fit into the house we leased.  But, as we moved in, we noticed that the furniture was going to fit after all.  It looked like I had measured the furniture wrong in Bremerton (I wrote down 67" for the entertainment center and it was actually 57", and I'd measured the bed too big as well!)  I only checked two of the items that I'd measured in Bremerton, but they were both wrong!  

Well, I finally figured out what happened.  Here is the story:

I measured all the furniture in Bremerton with my standard measuring tape.

They packed up our stuff including my measuring tape and sent it to Japan.  Since we were spending a few months in the Navy Lodge and occasionally working with metric measurements, I went to the hardware store to buy a metric measuring tape.  I found this cool tape that had metric on one edge and english on the other.

We'd used my measurements of the furniture in Bremerton and the house lay-out they gave us to figure out where each piece of furniture would go.  Partly for our own edification, but also because the movers will only place a piece of furniture once.  The house lay-out had a disclaimer on it that it was just approximate and actual measurements may vary.  So, after we got the keys to the house, I went over and measured with my new tape measure to make sure the rooms were the correct size in our model.  I was shocked when the room sizes were nearly 20% smaller than advertised and everything was no longer fitting in the rooms! I measured the Tatami room to be 87" wide when it should have been close to 9 feet wide.  We were changing which bedroom we were using, figuring out where to get rid of Caroline's couches, and even thinking of getting rid of the entertainment center I'd built!

On the moving day, we'd asked the movers to take the entertainment center upstairs. They set it down to investigate whether that was possible or not.  I had my tape in hand so I did a quick measure to see if it was truly too big.  I measured it with my new tape and then measured the space I originally wanted it and it fit with room to spare!  I then went and measured the bed and it would fit in the smaller room we wanted to place it in!  It was all fitting like the original model!  We chalked it up to rushed measurements in Bremerton, but it was nagging at me that I was 0 for 2 for measuring stuff...

Yesterday, William found my original tape measure and was playing around measuring things.  He asked me to hold the tape at the edge of the tatami room and he pulled it out and proclaimed that the room was 115 inches!  "No it's not William, I measured it several times and it was 87 inches."  "No, Dad, it's 115 inches... Look!"  Sure enough it was 115 inches.  I thought I was going insane!  After thinking on it a bit, I took both my new tape measure and the old tape measure and compared.  I was flabbergasted to see that my new tape measure wasn't showing the english units in inches, but rather tenths of a foot.  It was a decifoot tape where 10 "Inches" make a foot!  No wonder my measurements were off by 20%!

I can stop looking for my straight jacket on e-bay now...

Update:  I've asked around about the "Decifoot" units on the new tape measure and it appears that it isn't English units at all, but a pre-metric Japanese measuring unit whose 10 units pretty closely match 12 inches...  Buyer beware!