When I arrived under the lintel where we had left our shoes I felt as if I were intruding. The bearded foreigner was surrounded by the inn family and each member was handing him a present. There were blue and white Japanese towels folded into decorated envelopes, and there were fans and postcards. The cost of the gift fans may have been little but the maker had taken his designs from models of the best tradition, and the fans to be found for sale are not comparable.
The daughters of the house walked with us until we came to the Tokaido and then they pointed out our direction and stood waving farewells until we could see them no longer. I waited until then before making inquiry about the amount of the bill. This detail was a matter of distinct importance. When we met in Kyoto we pooled our purses and the common fund was entrusted to O-Owre-san’s care. Neither of us had made much effort to acquire theoretical information about what daily expenses might be. We had just so much paint with which to cover the surface of the definite number of days before our steamer would carry us away, and this meant that we would have to mix thick or thin accordingly. Experience only could teach us what items we could afford and what bargains we should have to make. I thus awaited the answer about the bill with flattering attention.
“The bill, including extras for iced water and cigarettes and getting our special dinner after every one else had finished,” said the treasurer with appropriate solemnity, “was three [yen].” (A yen is about fifty cents.) “And,” he concluded, “I gave a full yen for the tea-money tip.”
We waited until we sat down for the first rest before we attempted a practical financial forecast. We divided the number of remaining days into the sum of the paper notes carried in a linen envelope. The answer quieted our fears and exceeded our hopes. Putting aside a reserve for extra occasions, beyond our inn bills we would be able to afford the luxury of spending along the road twenty-five cents a day for tea, tobacco, and chemical lemonade.
THE FIRST REST SPOT OF THE SECOND DAY
There is something unnatural in such simplicity of finance, as anyone must agree who believes at all in the jealousy of the gods. I should have been forewarned by an old Chinese tale that I had been told only a fortnight before. It was while sitting in a Peking restaurant. The teller was a most revolutionary son of a most conservative mandarin. A peasant once entertained a god unawares. In the morning the god told the peasant that any wish which he might name would be granted, be it for riches, or power, or even the most beautiful maid in all the dragon kingdom to be his wife. But the peasant asked that he might only be assured that until the end of his days he need never doubt when hungry that he would have food, and at the fall of night that he would find a pillow on which to lay his head. The god looked at him sorrowfully and said: “Alas! You have asked the impossible. Such favours are reserved for the gods alone.”
We got up from our figuring blithely, indulging ourselves in the idea that we could achieve such evenness of expenditure. Think what an upsetting of ponderous economics and competitive jungle law there would be if the world could and should abruptly take any such consideration of its wealth!
The payer of the bill had also added that he had given a full yen for the tea-money tip. In those large areas of Japan where the barbarous foreigner has not yet intruded with his indiscriminate giving, there is to be found the ancient system of tea-money. The tea-money custom is founded on the belief that the wayfarer is the personal guest of the host. When the guest departs he is not paying a bill, he is making a present, and to this sum he adds from a quarter to a third part extra. This extra payment is the tea-money and is to be divided by the host among the servants. The departing guest is then given a present. All in all, leave taking is a function.
A guest does not ask nor demand. He offers a request and thereby confers a supreme favour upon any servant fortunate enough to be designated. All this pleasant service has not the embarrassment that one must confine a request to any particular maid so as to escape the necessity of widespread tipping at departure. It is all in the tea-money.