In a little tea-house I made myself some cocoa in my saucepan, and the people wanted to taste it, and seemed highly amused with me, particularly with my folding knife and spoon, and the metal cup that fitted on so neatly. Thus fortified I retraced my steps to Chōnan, and towards Mobara. I expected to find an inn on the way, but none appeared, and I had to walk right back to Mobara. Then troubles began, and after walking these 27 miles I was tossed from inn to inn, no room anywhere! Not that there were so many inns, for it is a small town, and at last, in despair, I decided to go to the station and take a train to Chiba, the provincial capital, where there would surely be room, but I was tired and hungry, and had two hours to wait for the train. In Japanese inns it is very different from ours; if you have no room you cannot get a meal, as there is no such thing as a dining-room.
However, I found a charming little tea-house, where I got a rest and a meal, and they arranged with a hotel by the station to put me up, or shall I say “take me in”? for certainly I would not have gone to the place under other conditions.
April 8.—Came back by the 8.15 train and reached Tokio early in the afternoon. After calling on Miss B—— I went to the P——s to dinner and to make the finishing touches to the arrangements about my removal, which is planned for two days hence. The blow that awaited me should not have been unexpected in this land, where no one seems to consider a promise more binding than a compliment is true. Well! though I had taken it before I went to Boshu on certain understandings, I found my house sold to some one else when I returned! As I had arranged with my present people to leave directly on my return from Boshu, I was not a little vexed, particularly as the house suited me so perfectly in every way.
The new owner was willing to let it at a rent of 40% higher than I had taken it for, and he further refused to do any of the necessary papering and plastering that I had had guaranteed me, so that instead of ordering the removal carts, I have to sit down and argue with the landlord, and it may take three weeks to settle. I really grieve that it is so utterly impossible to trust the Japanese; I had loved them so before I had suffered so much of this sort of thing.
April 9.—The cherry flowers yesterday were like great clouds touched rosy by the setting sun, and to-morrow is the garden party of Professor S——’s ambitions, and to-day! nearly a foot of snow on my window ledge—everything buried and broken, as none have seen them before. There is more snow to-day than there was through all the winter put together, and the pink cherry flowers are cloaked so as to conceal their very existence; they do not lend the snow even a flush of pink.
There was no way of getting to the Botanical Institute but by walking, and I am very glad indeed that I did choose to venture out, instead of listening to the counsels of the Japanese and remaining at home. The streets were almost deserted, and I trod unspoiled snow, which sometimes reached half-way to my knees. It still snowed heavily, and the weight of the umbrella became a burden, as well as being a useless encumbrance, as I was always putting it to one side or the other to gaze at some new delight, while the gusts whirled in and under it from every side. Devastation and ruin lay on every side; great boughs were blown off the cherry trees and lay across the road. The magnolias which yesterday sent up glittering white chalices to heaven, to-day hung limp yellow rags beneath the snow-laden boughs; even the glow of the flaring crimson plum was quenched. In front of a temple I daily pass, a great cryptomeria was shattered across the road, its main shaft broken into three pieces, so that the whole tree shut down like a concertina.
Every telegraph and telephone wire was broken, the ends lying like traps curled under the snow ready for one’s legs, and the rest looped from pole to pole in festoons of white rope, for the snow stuck to the wires till they were as thick as my arm. On the tram lines a few snowed-up and deserted trams stood helpless, and not even a kuruma passed to jeer at them.
It continued snowing all day, and as the roads were so unspeakably and unusually bad, I decided to go calling and see the town thoroughly when I was about it. So I walked to the Embassy, about 2½ miles or so, and saw the streets, one after the other, in the same condition of ruin. The traffic was still almost nil, but some people had been up and down the big main street by the Kudan, and a certain amount of snow had melted. That Kudan hill was a bog on the surface and a river below, and as there were no footpaths, I was through it nearly to my knees. After paying several calls in the neighbourhood, I decided to go and see what Azabu looked like, and walked over there; the P——s would not let me away again, the roads were too terrible, and so I stopped the night there.
Obviously the garden party is postponed.
April 10.—The snow is still lying thickly everywhere, but on the road the foot tracks are nearly knee-deep in slush. The papers are full of accounts of yesterday’s storm. It appears that all the railways, as well as trams and telegraphs, were cut off. There was no possibility of getting to Yokohama even, and the Kobe express was snowed up for the day 10 miles from Tokio. A few trams are running this morning—they are repairing wires as quickly as possible. By the end of the day nearly all the cars were in working order; I think they have been quite remarkably quick over them, but the telegraph wires are still hanging in festoons or tripping one up.