From Kyoto to Kobe is a ride of two and a half hours in the train. The road skirts the hills which bound Kyoto, passes Osaka, and follows some rivers that flow higher than the level of the country—indeed, the road runs through tunnels under three large streams!
The terracing of the land is very marked along this route. Japanese methods of farming and irrigation require that the land shall be level, and so the country is all plotted off into little irregular terraces. The ground is saturated with water, which stands to a depth of several inches around the growing crops. Paddy-fields are really ponds of standing water, while a farm is a marsh, the house alone rising above the surface. Farmers, while taking in their rice or plowing their fields, work with the water and thick black mud up to their knees.
Kobe is the foreign name applied to Hyogo, the treaty-port. It is next to Yokohama in commercial importance. The foreigners in Kobe—English, German and American—have a very pleasant club, and pretty bungalows on the hills back of the town. A beautiful waterfall and the Temple of the Moon are not far away.
Maiko, in the province of Harima, is one of the most enchanting spots in this part of Japan. It is near the upper entrance to the Inland Sea, not far from Kobe. Nothing can be more fairy-like and mysterious than the spreading, twisted trees on the white sand there in the moonlight. Maiko means dancing girl, and the place gets its name from the effect given the ancient pines when the wind blows the sand into shifting scarfs about them.
Lake Shinji, on the northern coast, is also one of the most interesting places in the country and one seldom seen by foreigners. Ogo-Harito is famous for its giant rocks washed by the sea into strange and fantastic shapes. It is the female spirit of the west coast, while Matsushima is considered the male spirit of the east coast.
If one has time, Yahakii should be seen, for it is a very strange valley with its enormous conventional terraces made by nature. At the bottom of the canyon is a swift river, and temples are perched here and there on high crags. Koro Halcho, in the province of Kii, is very beautiful, especially in the spring when the gorge with its deep cliffs is made lovelier still with wild flowers. A motorcyclist would find inviting trips in Hokkaido, where the roads are not bad, though it is rather difficult getting there. Over on the other coast, from Nazano to Navetta, and around Kamisana, there are good roads.
Our trip through the Inland Sea, from Kobe to Nagasaki, was one of the most delightful experiences that we had in Japan. We chartered a boat at Kobe, after an extravagant comedy of errors. L. went on board at midnight to examine it, and the agent did not discover until after the business was finished that it was not the boat which he intended L. to see at all; but the captain was too quick for him, and seized the opportunity to make a good bargain.
It turned out very well indeed for us. The steamer was of two hundred tons burden, one hundred and fifty feet long, with very comfortable cabins—two small ones in European style and one large one extending entirely across the boat, with mats in native style, where Japanese passengers may lie side by side on their comforters. We took our own supplies, and had a very good cook until he went off one night on a spree.
We went aboard one evening, and sailed at daybreak next morning, being awakened by the rattling of the chain and the churning of the propeller. Soon we were gliding out of the harbour between the shipping, just as the sun came up out of the Eastern Ocean, chasing the shadows down the hillsides and bathing the shore in a glorious crimson. We turned Hyogo Point and headed for Akashi Straits, to enter the Inland Sea, passing palisades like those on the Hudson.
All day long we went through the archipelago of green and yellow islands. At first the sea was glassy, then gently ruffled, and junks and sampans with queer sails glided by. Toward evening we passed into even narrower passages and straits, and the moon rose, all silver in the twilight sky, while we turned many times, now to the right, now to the left, finally coming to anchor off the twinkling lights of Onomichi. We landed after dinner and walked through the little town, then sat out on deck and sang in the flooding moonlight.