"Well," she said, "I like your music better, I think. It is more lively and has more variety."
Then we had tea, and after tea of the kind usually served in Japan, the husband, a fierce Samurai in the pictures he showed us, but now a genial, broad-smiling doctor of the old Japanese school, insisted that we should take bowls of powdered tea which he prepared with his own hands. In the drinking of this the Little Maid instructed us. We were to take the bowl, the left hand underneath, the fingers of the right hand clasped about it, lift it to the forehead, a movement of unspoken thanks, and very gently, so as not to suggest that the tea needed to be dissolved, were to roll the tea around in the bowl three times and then take one drink—making much noise, meanwhile, with the lips to show how much we enjoyed it.
"That is very vulgar in your country," interrupted the Little Maid, "is it not so?"
"Well," I said, "lots of people do it, but not for the reason of courtesy."
We were to roll it around three times more, and then drink again; three times more, and a third drink, leaving this time but a little, which, without being rolled around again, was to be drunk at a swallow—three drinks and one swallow to the bowl. O-kin-san says that this last swallow should be only the foam, which must be drunk to show that the tea is so good that the guest must have even the foam; and that not until then does the noise of appreciation come, and then only because the foam cannot be drunk without noise. It was well. We exchanged autographs and cards. With the kind permission of the Little Maid's aunt we took pictures of the interior, and then with much bowing and many "sayonaras" we passed out under the cherry trees.
"We say 'Good-morning,'" said the Little Maid, explaining the courtesies of Japanese greeting and good-by, "and we bow; and we say 'It is a long while since I have seen you,' or 'It is a fine day,' and we bow again. At the end of each sentence you must bow, and it is the same when you say good-by."
Before I learned that the Mikado had sent a general edict through the land that all foreigners in Japan were to be treated with particular consideration while this war is going on—thus making it safer for the tourist now in this country than it ever has been or will be, perhaps, for a long time—I had been greatly impressed by the absence of all signs of disorder, street quarrels, loud talking, and by the fact that in Tokio, one of the largest cities in the world, one could go about day or night in perfect safety. I told this to the Maid of Miyanoshita.
"So desuka," she said without surprise, and that means "Indeed." And when she said later that there were many Japanese novelists, but they did not write love stories, I was reminded further that I had seen no man in Japan turn his head to look at a woman who had passed him—no exchange of glances, no street gallantry at all.
"The song of the 'Goo-goo Eyes,'" I said, "would never have been written in Japan."