The four Corners in Japan

by Amy Ella Blanchard

"We could come back to it," argued her aunt.

"But it will get hotter and hotter," said Nan, "and more mosquitoish and we shall not want to come back until the summer is over," she added.

"Well, we needn't begin to argue about it yet," put in Mary Lee, "for we couldn't go anyhow until Mrs. Craig finds a place for us, and that will not be so easy to do."

So they lingered on in the rain, amusing themselves in many ways. Mr. Harding was very busy just at this time and was not able to give them much of his society, but Mr. Montell appeared frequently and Colonel Craig escorted them to many interesting places, to the museum in Uyeno Park, to the Zoölogical Garden, to Asakusa, or up and down the Ginza, the principal shopping street of the city.

"For my part," said Nan one day, as she and Mary Lee were being drawn rapidly through the rain to make a second visit to the temples of Asakusa, "I think it is really amusing to see the streets on a rainy day. It is ridiculously funny to watch the people with paper umbrellas and those queer clogs. Look at our runner, too; isn't he a sight, with his queer hat and that straw thatch of a cloak to keep off the rain? He looks so like the pictures we see that when I get to dreaming I can fancy the whole thing is unreal and that I am not here at all, but am looking at a moving picture show."

"Yes, but the jinrikisha men don't say 'Hi! Hi!' every few minutes as this one does," returned Mary Lee who was tenacious in the matter of absolute facts.

Nan laughed. The two were so very different, yet as they grew older were closer companions than they had been in their early days. Common experiences at college and in their travels had given them a better relation.

As they peeped out from behind the oilcloth curtain which protected them from the rain, they could see other jinrikishas drawn by similar straw-draped coolies, the water dripping down their legs, and their ceaseless note of warning calling attention to their advance through the narrow streets. They could see, too, women and children trotting along on their high clogs and wearing their rain-proof garments over which they held their umbrellas of oiled paper, so that, in spite of rain, the scene was not lacking color. Once in a while, a Buddhist priest or nun would be seen, and through the open fronts of the tea-houses along the way could be discerned squatting figures before tiny tables, eating with chop-sticks.

"Wouldn't it be fun to have a real Japanese party when we get back?" said Mary Lee. "We can get some chop-sticks and lacquered trays and things such as they have here."