From Both These
There Was A Glorious View Of Chokaizan, A Grand, Snow-Covered Dome,
Said To Be 8000 Feet
High, which rises in an altogether unexpected
manner from comparatively level country, and, as the great snow-
fields of Udonosan
Are in sight at the same time, with most
picturesque curtain ranges below, it may be considered one of the
grandest views of Japan. After leaving Obanasawa the road passes
along a valley watered by one of the affluents of the Mogami, and,
after crossing it by a fine wooden bridge, ascends a pass from
which the view is most magnificent. After a long ascent through a
region of light, peaty soil, wooded with pine, cryptomeria, and
scrub oak, a long descent and a fine avenue terminate in Shinjo, a
wretched town of over 5000 people, situated in a plain of rice-
fields.
The day's journey, of over twenty-three miles, was through villages
of farms without yadoyas, and in many cases without even tea-
houses. The style of building has quite changed. Wood has
disappeared, and all the houses are now built with heavy beams and
walls of laths and brown mud mixed with chopped straw, and very
neat. Nearly all are great oblong barns, turned endwise to the
road, 50, 60, and even 100 feet long, with the end nearest the road
the dwelling-house. These farm-houses have no paper windows, only
amado, with a few panes of paper at the top. These are drawn back
in the daytime, and, in the better class of houses, blinds, formed
of reeds or split bamboo, are let down over the opening.
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