January 7.—All day at the Institute, picking up dropped stitches. The term has not yet begun for the students.
January 8.—I was at the Institute in the morning, and at Professor F——’s for tea in the afternoon, where some New Year customs and flowers were shown, the New Year plants being the pine, the plum, and the bamboo.
January 9.—The New Year decorations are beginning to be pulled down from the streets, but a little tuft of pine is left in the place of each, and sometimes surrounded with a garland of rope.
As I was at home this afternoon, I had long talks with my landlady, to whom I seem to afford a great amount of interest. The clothes of a Japanese woman are really very cold and draughty for winter, because of the way the skimpy skirt opens in front (there is no front seam, it is only folded and confined by the broad obi or belt), though they may have as many as half a dozen padded garments on at once. She sees me, of course, in all stages of dress and undress, and greatly admires my warm spun knickers and stockings!
January 10.—I have been in this house now nearly two and a half months—except, of course, when I have been away—and every night I have had identically the same things for dinner. Dreadful! Not at all—I have come to the conclusion that it is a most excellent plan. How many men and women are worried and bored by the never-ending question, “What can we have for dinner?” If you always have the same things this most troublesome of all domestic problems disappears. No one wants anything but water to bathe in, unless they be fairy princesses or Queens of Scots, and yet the delight of a bath never palls: in these months I have had the same things to eat daily and relished them hugely. Consciously or unconsciously, we are so much the creatures of habit that if we are led to expect variety in our dinners, the same menu repeated twice becomes tiring and three times insufferable. We even remember what we had last week—but if we have daily food always the same, we judge only its quality, and if it is well cooked, relish it. Of course the menu must be wide and well chosen. I, for example, have the same five kinds of vegetables always served with my small piece of steak, and the frying of the fish is superb. From this peace I am now driven out by my landlady, who has at last realised that some variety would be, to say the least of it, usual. She consulted me about it, and has bought a cookery book of “sea food,” as foreign cookery is called, so I gave her a lesson in soups for a beginning, that being the part of the menu she managed least well. Oh me!—those dear peaceful dinners—I recommend every one to try the plan; it is philosophically sound and practically excellent.
I went to lunch at the Faculty and found many, but not all, the Professors there. Term has only theoretically begun. The day has been gloriously brilliant, so that one could shout for joy, though after sunset it was frightfully cold. At half-past five the stars came out, brilliant points of diamond light through the trees.
January 11.—I spent all the morning testing copper disks and the gas-engine, etc., though it was Saturday. Late in the afternoon I called on a Mrs. K—— with a card of introduction. Unfortunately, I have been far too busy to present half my introductions, but I wanted to know some more Japanese ladies, so called on this one. What a contrast she was to the others I have met! Running downstairs to meet me and chattering all kinds of greetings, expostulating against my removing my shoes (a thing, by the way, which is absolutely essential in all true Japanese houses, because of their beautiful floors), commenting on the weather, and thanking me for coming till my breath was quite taken away. Soon I discovered the reason for all these unusual things—she had been eleven years in America, and had studied at one of the Universities. Her husband had been eight years in America. She was exceedingly nice, but so unlike a Japanese! with her thickly scattered adjectives of “dear,” “sweet,” and “lovely,” though she was dressed in Japanese style.
We were comparing the marriage customs of the different nations. In Japan a man asks, “Whom does my father and mother wish for me,” if he does ask anything at all. In New York the man asks, “How much money has she?”—in Boston, “In which College did she study?”—in Philadelphia, “Who were her ancestors?”—and in England, “Does she love me?” Mrs. K——’s marriage seems to have been made in Boston: her subject was zoology and her husband’s medicine—all very unusual in a Japanese. She informed me that Japanese clothes are so much more difficult to make than foreign, which astonished me, for there are only straight lines in a Japanese dress. But it has to be evenly padded and lined, which makes the trouble. She also informed me that all the English and Americans married to Japanese are so “sweet and dear”—the different customs making their characters patient and charming.
It is true that in their eyes the average Westerner is childishly quick-tempered and troublesome.
January 12.—New Year calls on Professor and Mrs. S——, and a dinner-party at Professor F——’s, where every one but I was Japanese. Though the food was all European, we sat on the floor all the time and ate off a table a foot high. After dinner numerous reproductions of famous pictures were brought out, and I amused myself (and them also, I expect) by making them give their real opinions on the beauty or otherwise of the people in them. Most of our beautiful women would be wasted in Japan. Blue eyes are hard and unloving! Burne-Jones’ chins are laughable; Botticelli’s Madonna has no beauty and the saints are ugly. But Burne-Jones’ women’s hands are lovely, and the reflection in the water of one of his attendants of Venus very lovely too. Turner’s pictures are too crowded with detail!! Kaulbach was much admired.