One day we went to see a wonderful image. We rode out to it in jinrikishas, and we each had two ’rikisha boys to pull us. We sped along at a rapid pace, for the boys are so well trained that they make nearly as good time as a horse, and a day’s run is sometimes as much as forty miles.
We had a regular Japanese “tiffin,” or lunch, at a little Japanese inn that had a pretty garden all around it. We took off our shoes at the door just as the Japanese do, and walked across the soft, matted floor.
A screen was drawn aside for us to enter, and then closed again, leaving us in a little room. Here we all squatted on our heels, as nearly like a Japanese as our stiff muscles would let us, for, without being trained, it is hard to shut up like a jackknife.
Then pretty little Japanese girls stole in noiselessly, bringing us trays of food, one for each person, and knelt down beside us to uncover our dishes and wait on us.
In one tiny bowl was some vegetable soup, in another some rice, and in a third some fish, which was cooked for us, though to have been truly Japanese we should have eaten it raw.
Of course there was tea. Everywhere you go they give you tea in wee cups without handles; just about a thimbleful, without cream and without sugar; not at all as we drink it at home.
But with all this feast before us, there was nothing to eat it with but two funny little chopsticks, and terrible times we had trying to manage those little sticks that serve the Japanese so well, but which seemed bewitched the minute we got them between our fingers.
After trying a long time we would get a mouthful, as we thought, firmly fixed between the chopsticks, but just as we would open our mouths to take it in, the bewitched chopsticks would give a twitch, and down the whole thing would fall again.