September 26.—At work all day till I went to the meeting of the Botanical Society where Professor M—— spoke of his visit to China during the vacation, but I couldn’t understand very much.
September 28.—At the Institute all day, at night how it rained! Like a typhoon rain, only lasting all night at high pitch; I couldn’t sleep for it.
September 29.—The results of that rain! It was fair in the morning so I bicycled, thinking that as the rain was so heavy it would have cleaned the roads. And so it had, cleaned them just as long boiling cleans the bones of a chicken, and there was only left the stony skeleton of most of the roads; but in the high ground of Azabu, where the roads are pretty well made, they were passably good.
But then I got to Koishikawa, and about a mile from the Institute the entertainment began. Coming down a tram-line road I had been rather astonished to see straw piled up all round the telegraph posts, and several domestic articles such as pillows lying about the road, but where the tram stops I saw the reason, this road, a big main high road, was entirely under a rushing flood of water. I asked a policeman if there was any way of getting to the Botanical Gardens without going through it, but there was none.
I got a kuruma man to take me and my cycle on a kuruma, and by keeping in the central ridge of the road, he waded with me through this mile of water. But what devastation on either side! Men walking by their houses (placed a little lower than the road) up to their shoulders in water, though it had subsided a good deal already, all sorts of things floating about, and signs of ruin everywhere. The underground channel they had made for the river burst through in one place, and at the side of the road a regular roaring waterfall. As we went along floating tatami (heavy mats of straw, as much as one can lift and about 6 feet long and 2–3 inches thick) rushed on the kuruma, and my man had difficulty in getting round them, for he couldn’t drop the shafts to free his hands for that would have landed me in the water. We got there without mishap, but saw many tragi-comic sights, for the loss and wreckage among the small one-storied shops is terrible.
Coming back the water had subsided a little, but there was still much to go through. It was funny to watch people wading through it; on the shore on either side men balanced themselves on one leg on their high stilt-like geta (no easy feat I can assure you) and drew off their trousers, but not always without a spill. Piles and piles of straw mats, washed into pulp, were all over the place. When I returned home I heard that in the low ground in my neighbourhood six children had been drowned.
September 30.—In the papers one reads of many deaths and terrible loss of property from the floods, which were almost universal in the low ground of the city. There are regular hills of straw and wreckage all along the main highway I passed yesterday in a kuruma and the smell is far from pleasing, but there is no other way into the gardens, as the other roads are still under water.
In the evening we had a Debate, “That lies may be justifiable”; an excellent meeting, nearly all of the people speaking, and very amusing. One missionary got up and said she was most strongly in favour of lying and that she told three or four every day! Shrieks of laughter, for she spoke immediately after a very sweet missionary who spoke in favour of truth. All the rest of us were about equally divided, and the truth only won by three votes on more than thirty.
October 4.—Went to Ōmori and walked on to the temple on the hill beyond. Its green groves and quietness were very peaceful and lovely. It is almost woodland there, and there are few people. In the temple grove was a scarlet high pagoda, which gleamed between the stately trees. The spot is so peaceful and sweet and I was so tired of working that the day was very pleasant. We collected moss, and some little stones covered with it, and I had five Cryptomeria seedlings to make a forest, and with them I made a miniature landscape in a flat earthenware dish when I returned home—but it isn’t half as easy as it looks!
October 5.—At work on the fossils; at 2 o’clock I gave the first of my course of lectures at the University, the room was more than full, several standing all through the hour, and there were several Professors and the Dean there. I didn’t do so badly as I feared, after being so long out of practice, but the flying chalk made me hoarse. It was a little terrifying, and half of them didn’t understand very much owing to the language difficulty, but the others did. It is nice lecturing again, it is an excellent tonic.