The Host Is A
Frenchman, But He Relies On A Chinaman; The Servants Are Japanese
"Boys" In Japanese Clothes; And There Is A Japanese "Groom Of The
Chambers" In Faultless English Costume, Who Perfectly Appals Me By
The Elaborate Politeness Of His Manner.
Almost as soon as I arrived I was obliged to go in search of Mr.
Fraser's office in the
Settlement; I say SEARCH, for there are no
names on the streets; where there are numbers they have no
sequence, and I met no Europeans on foot to help me in my
difficulty. Yokohama does not improve on further acquaintance. It
has a dead-alive look. It has irregularity without
picturesqueness, and the grey sky, grey sea, grey houses, and grey
roofs, look harmoniously dull. No foreign money except the Mexican
dollar passes in Japan, and Mr. Fraser's compradore soon
metamorphosed my English gold into Japanese satsu or paper money, a
bundle of yen nearly at par just now with the dollar, packets of
50, 20, and 10 sen notes, and some rouleaux of very neat copper
coins. The initiated recognise the different denominations of
paper money at a glance by their differing colours and sizes, but
at present they are a distracting mystery to me. The notes are
pieces of stiff paper with Chinese characters at the corners, near
which, with exceptionally good eyes or a magnifying glass, one can
discern an English word denoting the value. They are very neatly
executed, and are ornamented with the chrysanthemum crest of the
Mikado and the interlaced dragons of the Empire.
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