Umé San in Japan

by Etta Blaisdell McDonald; Julia Dalrymple

The Japanese people are all alike! When they mean one thing they say another. Umé really meant that their lunch was delicious; that her pickled radish was the best to be had in Tokio; and her house the sweetest and cleanest in the world; but it would have been very bad manners to say so; and to be late to school is not at all honorable in Japan.

But Japan is a country where the people do everything in an original way. The carpenter pulls his saw toward him when he saws, and the planer pulls his plane toward him when he planes a board. Everybody sits down to work, and the horse goes into the stall tail first.

The Japanese school children can never understand how the English children can make sense out of books that one reads from left to right and from the top to the bottom of the page.

Umé's teacher read the lesson aloud and the children read it after her. They read from the bottom to the top of the page, from right to left, and from the end of the book to the beginning.

From seven until twelve o'clock the children were busy with their lessons and recitations, stopping to eat their lunches in the middle of the forenoon, and for a short recess at the end of every hour.

Umé loved to go to school. Tara always said, "It is because I am obliged to, that I go to school," but Umé knew that her school-days were the happiest she would have for many years. After they were over, she would go to her husband's house and take the lowest place in his family, as is the custom of Japanese maidens.

Before that time she must learn to sew, cook and direct the servants in every household duty; she must also learn the tea-ceremony and the ceremony of flower arrangement.

All these things she learns, as well as reading, writing and music.

The tea-ceremony, which sounds so simple, is a very old and difficult one. Every position of the one who conducts it, as well as that of the bowl, spoon, tea-caddy and towel, is regulated by rule.

Bowls are used instead of teapots, and tea powder instead of tea leaves. There is a sweeping of the room at the right time, and a walking out into the garden at another right time. Oh, it is not so simple as it sounds!