[ [201] At many stations one used to have handed into the carriage for less than a penny a pot of tea and a cup—you are entitled to keep both pot and cup if you like. The tea-seller's kettle of water is kept hot with charcoal. Tea is freshly infused in each customer's pot.
[ [202] For statistics and theine percentages, see [Appendix LVII].
EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO
CHAPTER XXXIV
A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS
(CHIBA)
What was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided excursions and gleaned as industry should find or chance should offer.—Johnson
When I first went to Chiba, the peninsular prefecture lying across the bay from Tokyo, many carriages in the trains were heated by iron hibachi[ [203]] with pieces of old carpet thrown over them. It is on the Chiba trains that the recruits of that section of the army which has to do with the operation of the railways learn their business. It is in part of Chiba—and also in a district in Tokyo prefecture—that the earliest rice is grown. Chiba also contains more poultry than any other prefecture.[ [204]] It has the further distinction of having tried to issue truthful crop statistics.[ [205]]
Wherever one goes in Japan one is impressed by the large consumption of fish—fresh, dried, and salted. Thin slices of raw fish make one of the tasty dishes at a Japanese meal. The foreigner, forgetting the Western relish for oysters and clams, is repelled by this raw fish, but a liking for it seems to be quickly acquired. In Tokyo the slices of raw fish are cut from the meaty bonito (tunny), but tai (bream) is also used. Bonito also provides the long narrow steaks, dried to a mahogany-like hardness, which are known as katsubushi. This katsubushi keeps indefinitely and is grated or shaved with a kind of plane and used much as the Western cook employs Parmesan cheese.