A Coolie Servant Washed Some Rice For My Dinner, But
Before Doing So Took Off His Clothes, And The Woman Who Cooked It
Let Her Kimono Fall To Her Waist Before She Began To Work, As Is
Customary Among Respectable Women.
The house-master's wife and Ito
talked about me unguardedly.
I asked what they were saying. "She
says," said he, "that you are very polite - for a foreigner," he
added. I asked what she meant, and found that it was because I
took off my boots before I stepped on the matting, and bowed when
they handed me the tabako-bon.
We walked through the town to find something eatable for to-
morrow's river journey, but only succeeded in getting wafers made
of white of egg and sugar, balls made of sugar and barley flour,
and beans coated with sugar. Thatch, with its picturesqueness, has
disappeared, and the Tsugawa roofs are of strips of bark weighted
with large stones; but, as the houses turn their gable ends to the
street, and there is a promenade the whole way under the eaves, and
the street turns twice at right angles and terminates in temple
grounds on a bank above the river, it is less monotonous than most
Japanese towns. It is a place of 3000 people, and a good deal of
produce is shipped from hence to Niigata by the river. To-day it
is thronged with pack-horses. I was much mobbed, and one child
formed the solitary exception to the general rule of politeness by
calling me a name equivalent to the Chinese Fan Kwai, "foreign;"
but he was severely chidden, and a policeman has just called with
an apology.
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