PORTERS, JAPAN.
The air is brilliantly fresh and sweet; we pass along by pine trees of many sorts, and between them see the fresh green of the feathery bamboos; these two colours, the dark blue-green of the pines and the brilliant yellow-green of the bamboo, are seen everywhere in Japan. Then there are avenues of red-stemmed trees called cryptomeria, we should say cedars, with dark heads spreading out at the top of their immense branchless stems. We see squirrels leaping about and scuttering up the trunks. Then we go across open spaces, which are like an emerald sea, for they are the brightest green you can imagine, the green of the growing paddy, which is cultivated here as in Burma. There are men dressed in garments of glorious blue, like those we saw in Egypt, hoeing and watching the important crops. Then we plunge into cool woods and follow little paths up and down, and when we want to get out and walk, feeling lazy brutes to sit still and let a fellow-creature haul us uphill, Yosoji says no, it would hurt the feelings of our men, who would imagine we thought them poor weak things and scorned them.
We twist down to a wooden bridge, dark maroon in colour, and built in one single span across a raging, leaping stream that dashes and splashes merrily far below. At the other end is one of the picturesque roofed arches or gates that the Japanese are so fond of, with its rich red tiles curved up at the corners. Not far on we catch a glimpse of a waving sheet of blue, a mass of flowers growing wild on a hillside, and in sight of it, but still in the shade of the trees, we sit down for lunch and to give the coolies a rest.
Several times during the run we have noticed shrines with images of little foxes before them, some clean and new, but some weather-worn and grown over with lichen. As Yosoji unpacks the lunch he tells us these are Shinto shrines put up in honour of the god of rice. It seems very appropriate to hear this now, just as we are going to fare merrily on hard-boiled eggs, a tiny chicken, and plenty of rice, finishing up with those astonishing bright-coloured cakes, which we have learnt to eat without fear. We rest a long time, and all except you smoke contentedly, watching the blue films curl upward under the still foliage; and then up and on once more.
OUR DINNER IN A JAPANESE INN.
It is nearly five o'clock before we reach our destination, a little village, with a rather famous inn, not very far from the sea. In fact, as we approach we can see the blue water shining out only about a mile away across a flat expanse broken by hummocky sandhills. The village is one long straggling street of thatched huts, rather like huge beehives, with broad eaves. Our rickshaw men, who have been showing signs of exhaustion, make a gallant effort at the last, and run us up to the door of the inn in fine style. The inn stands on legs raised a foot or two from the ground, and is well built, with solid wooden posts and a tiled roof. It is two storeys high and has verandahs round both floors.
As our men let down the shafts of the chairs for us to alight, two women and a man in native dress come out on to the verandah, and immediately fall down on their faces before us, with their foreheads on the ground. I don't know how you feel about it, but not having been born in the purple this sort of thing is embarrassing to me, and I wish they wouldn't! I have a vague idea that I ought to rise to the occasion by taking their hands and saying, "Rise, friend, I also am mortal," or something like that!