Eleven Hours Of Travelling Have Brought Me Eighteen
Miles!
IKARI, June 25.
- Fujihara has forty-six farm-houses and a yadoya -
all dark, damp, dirty, and draughty, a combination of dwelling-
house, barn, and stable. The yadoya consisted of a daidokoro, or
open kitchen, and stable below, and a small loft above, capable of
division, and I found on returning from a walk six Japanese in
extreme deshabille occupying the part through which I had to pass.
On this being remedied I sat down to write, but was soon driven
upon the balcony, under the eaves, by myriads of fleas, which
hopped out of the mats as sandhoppers do out of the sea sand, and
even in the balcony, hopped over my letter. There were two outer
walls of hairy mud with living creatures crawling in the cracks;
cobwebs hung from the uncovered rafters. The mats were brown with
age and dirt, the rice was musty, and only partially cleaned, the
eggs had seen better days, and the tea was musty.
I saw everything out of doors with Ito - the patient industry, the
exquisitely situated village, the evening avocations, the quiet
dulness - and then contemplated it all from my balcony and read the
sentence (from a paper in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society)
which had led me to devise this journey, "There is a most
exquisitely picturesque, but difficult, route up the course of the
Kinugawa, which seems almost as unknown to Japanese as to
foreigners." There was a pure lemon-coloured sky above, and slush
a foot deep below.
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