In the evening I went to dinner at the G——s, and enjoyed it very much; there were some entertaining people there.
February 17.—On my way to the College I pass a small factory, whose owner keeps his coal piled up in a great heap on the road against the wall. It doesn’t seriously interfere with the traffic, as the road is quite wide enough for a good-sized cart to pass even with it there, and I have never seen two trying to pass. The coal has been there many weeks now, but no one seems even to think of stealing it, though the houses around are extremely poor. I thought it wonderful honesty till I remembered that the Japanese think coal horrid, smoky, dirty stuff, quite unfit for use in rooms, but even so, in their bath-tubs they burn wood, and it might well tempt them to go after dark and help themselves. The streets, of course, are totally devoid of “street lamps.”
February 19.—I often wonder why I have not mentioned before the most extraordinary furs worn by the Japanese men. Though the fox is a kind of evil witch, a devil in popular imagination, yet practically every man wears a great fox skin round his neck. No pretence about making up into “boas” or anything: it is simply the whole skin, unlined, and doubled, fur outwards, along the middle of the back. The tail is then put through a hole in the animal’s head or neck, and both hang down in front of the wearer. A really rich man has so fine a skin that the bushy, brilliant red-yellow tail hangs down to his waist, waving around when he walks. Japanese ladies almost never wear furs, except when in foreign costume.
February 20.—Quietly busy over the fossils. There is no need to relate the innumerable details that require attention or exasperate one—the sections are yielding good results, all things considered, and I quite enjoy the cutting.
February 21.—Though the sun is so hot through the day that I sit in it with almost nothing on but a thin slip, night and morning are so cold that one shivers, and the ice is thick on the little pond in my garden. Yet a stark-naked youth comes to the well in the next garden, and a trim little maid works the rope and brings up buckets of cold water, which he pours over himself, and then proceeds to dry himself with a towel which he first carefully soaks in water (in the true Japanese way). This corner of the garden is the meeting-place of three gardens, and the well is common to the three households, so that sometimes a second maid may assist in his morning amusement. Behind the trees I can see the painted wood walls of the Mission church, where people go in European clothes to sing hymns.
February 22.—I had been really bullied into playing Hockey to represent the world against Japanese-born British. They were, of course, far stronger than we, as nearly all live together in Yokohama and practice twice a week, while none of us had played together before. We got 2 goals to their 4, however, and patted ourselves on the back.
Returning by train (Yokohama to Tokio, of course, is the chief line of rail in the country, so that the incident should not be compared with doings in some far-off highland place in Scotland), the train suddenly drew up with a jerk, far from one station and about the same distance from the next. The passengers were surprised, some slightly alarmed, and the train calmly waited for some time and then started racing back to the station from which we had come. We all resigned ourselves to a broken bridge, overturned carriages on the track, or something of the sort, and finally drew up at the station we had just left—much commotion on the platform, and we learned that from the luggage van some parcels had not been delivered! They were delivered over to the proper person and the train started off once more, to reach Tokio not a little late.
February 24.—There have been signs of the coming Dolls’ Festival, to take place on the 3rd day of the 3rd month. I have mentioned them already (see p. [74]). The shops are now full of them, and most fascinating they are, but too expensive to indulge in as I should like. The figures are all in little boxes, and sit solemnly, with their stiff robes spread out, as though they were really the nobles that they represent, and every one is interested in buying them, or at least gazing at them in their temporary homes. Several shops have sprung up this week filled with these boxes of dolls, and selling nothing else.
February 25.—At work all day at fossils, the record so far, for with the boy I cut and finished eleven sections in one day, some very nice. A ball at the British Embassy in the evening, very pleasant. Many interesting and amusing things happened, but unless given in great detail would not appeal to any one outside local gossip. Captain von L—— introduced me to the loveliest woman there—an American (sad to hear their awful accent coming out of such patrician lips!), the one who at a previous dance had so entranced me and my young partner that we spent our sitting-out time following her around to see her eat ices and laugh; her manner was perfection—calm, still, and gracious, honey-sweet looks in eyes that never smiled while one was speaking to her, and that just broke into little curls of smiles as she answered—a suggestion of humility while waiting to hear another’s banalities, yet with it a commanding dignity that forbade any one else to interrupt the person who was speaking to her. Her name is Mrs. D——, and I am going to see her, as she very graciously invited me to do. I wonder if she includes thought-reading among her other charms and read my admiration? Her high-heeled pink satin slippers twinkled gaily in the dance; she did not hesitate to lift the Worth frock very high—with such ankles I wouldn’t! On her white soft neck were the loveliest little blue veins, I never saw anything so suggestive of living marble. She was like white marble, with an underflush of rose and violet. The little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes added to her charm rather than detracted from it. She is the only woman in Tokio who has bewitched me.
There was a very striking-looking girl, daughter of a French mother and a Japanese father, her hair done cavalier fashion, with a side bunch of ringlets under a big white bow; her very French frock and tiny waist became her well, and she strode through the Lancers with such a devil-may-care manner that we could not but remark her—favourably too in spite of it all.