When you step into sight, a score dart forward, dragging their rickshaws after them with one hand and holding the other up to draw your attention, and shouting, "Riksha! Riksha! Riksha!" You choose one, and step in. The human steed springs between the shafts, raises them and tilts you backwards, and then darts off, as if eager to show you his strength and speed, and prove to you what a good choice you have made.
Away bounds the little man, and soon you are bowling along a narrow street where a passage seems impossible, so full is it of boys and girls, men and women, shops and stalls. There may be a side-walk, but then, the shopkeepers have taken that to spread out their wares, or the stallkeepers have set up their little booths there. So the people who want to go along the street, and the boys and girls who want to play in it, are all driven to the middle of the way.
Here and there your rickshaw dodges, working its way through the crowd. Now the man pauses a second lest he should run full-tilt over a group of gaily-dressed little girls, each with a baby on her back, playing at ball in the road. Half a dozen others are busy with battledores and shuttlecocks, and the gaily-painted toys drop into your carriage, and you are expected to toss them out again to the mites, who will bow very deeply and with the profoundest gravity in return for your politeness; then something flutters over your head, and you see that two boys and an old man are sitting on the roof of a house about as high as a tool-shed, trying to get their kites up. And you say to yourself that it is lucky that there are no horses, for the quietest beast that ever lifted a hoof would bolt here and charge through the whirl and uproar and the rain of dropping shuttlecocks and bouncing balls.
Another fine thing about rickshaw-riding is that no one can call it expensive. While the boy goes, you pay him about sevenpence an hour; while he waits you pay him rather less than twopence-halfpenny an hour, and you can have his services for a whole day for about half a crown. But some of them will try to cheat you in places where foreigners are often met with, and will put a whole twopence an hour on the regular price.
This is very sad, and causes the rickshaw-boy to be looked upon as a tradesman; he is not allowed the honour of being regarded as a servant and the member of an honourable profession--one who puts his master's interests before his own. But, as a rule, the foreigner who employs the same rickshaw-boy comes to look upon him as a guide, philosopher, and friend. He will tell you where to go and what to do; he knows all the sights, and can tell you all about them. If you go shopping, he will come in and see that you don't get cheated any more than you are bound to be. If you go on an expedition, he will find out the best tea-house to stay at, he will cook for you, wait on you, brush your clothes, put up the paper screens to form your bedroom, take them down again, see that the bill is reasonable, pay it, and fee the servants--in short, he will manage everything, and you have only to admire what you have gone to see.
Wherever you stop on a jaunt, whether it is some famous temple or some lovely park, there is sure to be a coolie's tea-house handy, and he takes the opportunity of refreshing himself. He dives into the well under the seat and fetches out his lacquer box full of rice. He whips the rice into his mouth with chopsticks, and washes it down with the yellow, bitter Japanese tea. Then he sits and smokes his tiny pipe until you are ready to go on.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
IN THE COUNTRY
The Japanese farmer is one of the steadiest workers in the world; he tills his patch of land, day in, day out, with untiring industry. He works seven days a week, for he knows nothing of the Sabbath, and only takes a day off for a fair or a festival when his land is in perfect order and he is waiting for the crop.
Almost the whole of the land is turned over with the spade, and weeds are kept down until the whole country looks like a neatly-kept garden. Many crops are grown, but the chief of them all is rice, and when the rice crop fails, then vast numbers of people in Japan feel the pinch of famine.