To ask a guest to come to your house and give him only tea and cake, or a dinner of no greater magnificence than the one you eat yourself every night, is almost impossibly rude.
After cutting fossils till 5, I went home to entertain a Japanese to the same food that I eat every day. Am I a laughing-stock among them? Doubtless, and for more things than one.
March 28.—Fossil-cutting all morning. Late in the afternoon I called on Mr. and Mrs. B——, who have come up to Tokio for a couple of weeks from Sapporo, where the snow is in parts 28 feet deep—the worst they have had for more than twenty years. They have brought up their adopted daughter—the Aino girl I described from Sapporo—this time we were able to talk in Japanese, which of course she generally speaks.
March 31.—I am making the experiment of going on a walking tour for a few days with friends, and we have chosen Boshu peninsula, as it is little frequented and beautiful. We were up at 5 o’clock this morning. Very late too, as we should have got up at 4.30. However, we managed to catch the boat which is to take us to Boshu Province, the scene of our tour. The sail past Tokio down the bay was very calm and lovely; we had perfect weather and were allowed, as a special privilege, to go on the top front part of the deck, where we had a good view. Fuji gleamed white over clouds and pine tree foregrounds, and the sky was blue. The journey lasted seven hours, and we saw many small bays and islands down the coast, of perfect loveliness.
Landing at Hojo in Boshu about 1 o’clock, we walked across a point of the peninsula to Mera. Here the inn we expected to find was demolished, but we found another and got put up. It was next door to a big school, however, and we had a very large and very interested audience of about a hundred children in constant attendance. C—— had never been to a Japanese inn before, and we were a very merry party indeed. The scenery here was in no way striking, that I hope is to come.
A LARGE AND INTERESTED AUDIENCE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN WATCHED OUR PROCEEDINGS AT MERA
April 1–5.—We have been walking all day all these days, and there was no time to write in this journal, for though we have walked and slept very little we have eaten and talked and laughed so much that we had time for nothing else.
The first day’s walk was disappointing, flat, not very near the sea, and with villages every half-mile or so, but we reached a pretty place by 5 o’clock, and slept at Chikura in greater comfort than we did at Mera.
Between Chikura and Wada, our next day’s walk, the coast was prettier, but the weather dull, raining, in fact, and we did not get the sea-bathing we had hoped. At luncheon-time it was very wet, and we sat in a row under the porch of a Buddhist temple (it is like a country lich-gate) and ate our cold rations. An old woman stopped to gaze at us, and M—— (who speaks excellent Japanese, having been here since she was two years old) asked her if she thought we were funny to sit there. “No,” she said, “you came to play and you are playing. This child” (pointing to a baby of nine months on her back) “also plays.” Parts of the road were fascinating, through bits of pine wood and past many a little temple. I particularly noticed the great hedges, walls really, of podocarpus, and the numerous lovely blooming camellias, peach and cherry trees. Between Wada and Kominato the road was still prettier, with rocky bays and pines. We attracted a good deal of attention, because C—— and M—— had red hair and J—— yellow. I alone escaped most of it. The evenings were really very funny. We all dropped into Japanese ways soon enough. We had many jokes, but none of them would interest folk eleven thousand miles away. Wada to Kominato was our longest day, and half the walking party got driven! What with our pack-horse laden with luggage and the two kurumas, M—— and I were highly amused at the walking tour. We were able to get milk nearly everywhere, which is noteworthy in Japan, where it is usually a great difficulty to find it outside the cities. The Boshu people drink it themselves, and excellent it was.