To-night we went on to Shimonoseki, and my Omine companion kindly took me to his father’s house there. A delightful house, with a great flight of rough granite steps leading up to it like those to a temple. Here I inhabited three big rooms, opening out of each other, as well as a dressing-room. They were extremely kind, and only spoiled things by refusing to believe that I could prefer not to have chairs, etc. brought into their rooms for my use. I pleaded with them, and was allowed to sit on cushions on the floor, but could not escape a European dinner instead of the true Japanese meal. However, it was very good, and I made up for several past meals of poor quality. I was given the seat of honour, and my host and I ate alone—his father, mother, aunt, and sister visiting us for short intervals, and bringing various things, but never sitting with us. They are certainly wealthy people, and not very cultured, yet there was not the slightest attempt at display. All that the rooms contained were a single vase of beautiful flowers in the corner by the kakemono (long picture), a couple of quaint ornaments, cushions, and in one of the rooms a beautiful polished table 6 inches high, on which was a carved tray with hand-painted tea-cups, and the hibachi (charcoal brazier) with an ornamental kettle boiling on it.
October 15.—I got up about 5.30, and crossed over to Kiushiu—my host coming to see me off and giving all possible help. I did not arrive at the mine—Namazuta—till 12.30. The mine is a large one, and though of Tertiary age, contains very many interesting stones.
After examining the mine I returned very late at night to Fukuoka, having escaped proper meals all day. The chief of the coal mine kindly gave me fish and rice and a few real Japanese things at 4.30. At Fukuoka the inn very noisy, but otherwise all right.
October 16.—Noise kept me awake till after 12, and I had to get up about 6.30. I visited the head office, where officials are arranging for my introduction to several small mines in Amakusa, which is an island off the island of Kiushiu—and on which no human being speaks a word of English, and all the natives speak such a curious dialect that even the Japanese themselves cannot understand it. I guess I shall have a gay time. On this whole expedition the amount of hours of travelling per hour in a coal mine is very great, and I seem to be going night and day to see a mine here and there. (Things have got wrong here somehow. I have forgotten to mention the Miike mine.)
Some of the scenery is very beautiful, and though, of course, I am missing all the regulation sights, I see glimpses of beauty here and there.
The train arrived very late at Misumi, a little port, from which I shall go to Amakusa. The moon was shining over the calm sea, stretching into many inlets and set with many islands, and the effect was most beautiful and romantic. Though I thought the train had landed me in Misumi, it turned out that I had to take a kuruma to the hotel, and it went right out into the country, over a hill where not a human being or habitation was to be seen, and I began to think the kuruma man had designs on my life and purse. After half an hour he landed me on the other side of the peninsula, where the village proper lies, and where there is a moderately good hotel. On the ride we passed many mud-walled thatched cottages, without a sign of life in them. The Japanese live in open houses by day, but at night they put boarded shutters up before every window, so that no one (at least no Japanese, I insist on mine being opened) in Japan sleeps with fresh air round him, which, I believe, is the reason there is so much consumption. They cannot see the silliness of doing this, and are constantly bragging that they live in the open air, when all their eight to nine hours of sleep are spent in these very stuffy rooms, with a lamp and generally a charcoal fire burning beside them.
October 17.—The boat was supposed to start at 9 A.M. this day, but 1 P.M. saw it still gaily coaling. It is the very smallest steamer I have ever been in, not really as good as a ferry-boat, but the prospective journey is to last twelve hours. While waiting about the landing-place I saw many strange fish which were being brought in. One big fishing-boat had a load of huge creatures, bigger than men, of two kinds. One kind like lovely dragons, with long snouts and great wing-like fins, the other fish the most curious I have ever seen, and apparently, though I don’t know at all, some kind of shark. They were about 8 feet long and thick as a man’s body, and their heads were quite flat and square-ended.
I could not have imagined such strange creatures, a drawing gives none of the extraordinary effect they made lying there in numbers, their great flat bodies heavier than a man could lift unaided. They are to be eaten, but seem to me to be terribly coarse.
There is no first class on this steamer, and I am the only second class passenger, but as my portion should be in a minute cabin with stuffy curtains and tightly fixed port-holes, I am squatting on deck with the third class people, who are as thick as flies round a honey-pot. There are mats spread on the deck, and most of the people are lying on them wedged against each other. I am sitting on my bags, leaning fairly comfortably against the rail and next to the only man who is a real cute traveller. He has spread his blanket (Japanese always travel with blankets, generally white ones!) its full size, and is lying in the middle, with a clear 2 feet of spare space all round him, and it is characteristic of Japanese travellers that though the others are terribly crowded no one sits on his blanket or asks him to curtail its extent. The scenery is lovely, and the sea without a ripple. On every side are hills with range after range of jagged peaks, and in the sea countless pine-decked islands; land lies all round, and it is difficult to believe one is at sea. 2 P.M.—I am certainly seeing life: we have just had tea in picnic fashion, squatting here together—and indeed most picnics are made to far less beautiful places than this island-dotted sea. One of the women had brought a tray of small cakes, all looking excellent, but most of them made with the sweet bean paste I have not yet learned to like, though there were delicious sponge-cakes as well, five of which I got for 1¼d.—and I paid three farthings for my tea, which was three times what any one else did. They would have given it to the foreigner for nothing—but one must support the honour of one’s country in a far land, and I have learned that though the Japanese give very freely and refuse a dozen times to take payment, they are not really at all averse to receiving it.[3]