Numadzu: A view of the fishermen along the river. Rows of huge fish can be seen on the bank.
I was given an airy chamber where I could have slept late next morning had I not been awakened at daybreak by what seemed to be several shots from a revolver. I sprang to the window, wondering what had happened. In the yard below squatted the American-Japanese children, with a stick of “punk” and a great bundle of fire-crackers. I had forgotten the date. It was the Fourth of July, and Nagasaki was celebrating. All through the day shots and explosions were heard about the city; nor was the racket made entirely by Americans.
On other days the boy and girl of the hotel dressed exactly like their playmates, and no sooner turned their backs on their father than they began at once to speak the Japanese language. But on this American day the boy wore a knickerbocker suit and leather shoes; his sister had laid aside her kimono and wooden sandals to wear a short skirt and long stockings. Instead of the fancy coil on top of her head, her jet-black hair hung in two braids over her shoulders; and all that day they spoke nothing but the English language.
Two days later I hunted up the railway station and took third-class passage for Hiroshima. The train wound through a rolling country, here circling the base of a thickly wooded hill, there clinging close to the shore of a sparkling bay. Farm crops grew in every valley and on every hillside. Peasants toiled in the fields; their neat cottages dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see. We passed through village after village. The stations were well built and bore the name of the town in both Japanese and English.
The trains were like those of America, but every car was a smoker; for tobacco is used by almost every man and woman in Japan. There were ladies seated in the car, smoking pipes that looked like long lead-pencils with bowls that held much less than the smallest thimble. There were no dining-cars. At nearly every station boxes containing rice, several boiled and pickled vegetables, one baked fish, and a pair of chop-sticks only half split in two, were sold. The contents were always the same; the price surprisingly low.
I reached Hiroshima at twilight, and left the train in company with two English-speaking Japanese youths who had taken upon themselves the task of finding me a lodging. The keeper of a hotel not far from the station said that he had never housed a white man, but that he would for a change. I bade my new acquaintances farewell.
Some street urchins near Tokio.
The hotel office was paved with small stones from which a broad stairway led upward. The keeper shouted a word of command. A smiling woman, short and fat, with a wide sash wound round and round her waist, appeared on the landing above and beckoned me to climb up. I caught up my bundle; but before I had mounted two steps the proprietor sprang forward with a scream, and, clutching at my coat-tails, dragged me back. Half a dozen servant-girls tumbled wild-eyed into the office and joined the landlord in scolding me. I had dared to start up the stairway without removing my shoes!