August 8.—I had great luck cycling back to the station in excellent weather, but found the train was two hours late, owing to the destruction of last night’s storm; and before we got back to Tokio it was three hours late, so that instead of getting home just in time for dinner, I arrived, famished, at nearly 10. A kind Japanese lady gave me some biscuits in the train, for which I was grateful indeed; they were Huntley and Palmers’ “Osborne,” and M’Vitie and Price’s Shortbread! The joy of meeting these dear old friends in such an unexpected place was even greater than the relief my internal economy felt. They must have been wealthy people to have such biscuits, as, indeed, I had previously suspected, for the girls’ blue and white kimonos, that would naturally have been of cotton, were made of silk—poor children! for it is really much hotter than the plebeian cotton.
August 9.—A quiet day of rest. It is very hot, and I expect I am the only foreigner fool enough to be in Tokio.
August 10–12.—I spent a short time at the Institute and the rest at home, writing in my garden, and battling with mosquitoes and mould, but really having a restful time, for I ran away (thinking it the better part of valour) from the former, and write inside a mosquito net.
August 13.—I set off with my bicycle to Yejiri to see the cycads again. As it is 7½ hours’ journey by slow train, I went to the farther station of Shizuoka, at which the express stops, and got there in five hours, to bicycle 7 miles back to the temple. The wicked old sinner of a priest had written to me, in answer to my requests, to say that there were no cones this year, and I had believed him till I heard by chance it was false. And I found quantities of cones—twenty-six huge things, a foot and a half long, on one tree!
The smell of these cones is very strong, like pineapple and cake fermented together; it is a very thick smell, and in a room one of the cones was very persistent and penetrating, though it did not seem to attract any insects at all.
I had difficulty with the females, for the trees are awfully tall and shaky, but by tying two ladders together I got at them, and clung for my life to the sturdy leaves. The temple is as sweet as ever, but the evening was wet. As I sat over my supper in the house, which is all opened up so as to look very big, the priest unconcernedly took off his only garment and had his bath without closing the bath-room partition, while his wife went about all the time with about a yard of cotton round her hips.
Clothes, you will say, fill a large part of this journal, but Japan is one great exhibition in the art, mistakes, or want of clothes. Everything from perfection to nothingness is to be seen nearly every day. Everything from a soul-thrilling beauty and dignity to a side-aching farce of incongruity.
August 14.—I set off at half-past six to get back to Shizuoka, as I expected Professor B—— to tea in the afternoon in Tokio. Well, first they put me on the sea road, which at the start seems more direct than the one I came by, but actually follows the bays and hills, and adds several up and down miles to the journey. Then, even when I started, it was steadily pouring with rain. Then both my tyres went flat with punctures, quite unmendable in those wilds. Then the road was bad and narrow, and made of stones the size of marbles up to the size of a doubled fist. Then the streams flooded, and I had to go through thirty or forty of them which had decided to go over instead of under or beside the road. Then the roar of a landslip added a fillip of excitement. Then the growl of thunder and the brilliance of lightning, which I fancied might be attracted by my spokes. Then, not torrents of rain, but cataracts, waterspouts, Niagara falls!