Ito Asked Me For Instructions Once For
All, Put Up My Stretcher Under A Large Mosquito Net Of Coarse Green
Canvas With A Fusty Smell, Filled My Bath, Brought Me Some Tea,
Rice, And Eggs, Took My Passport To Be Copied By The House-Master,
And Departed, I Know Not Whither.
I tried to write to you, but
fleas and mosquitoes prevented it, and besides, the fusuma were
frequently noiselessly
Drawn apart, and several pairs of dark,
elongated eyes surveyed me through the cracks; for there were two
Japanese families in the room to the right, and five men in that to
the left. I closed the sliding windows, with translucent paper for
window panes, called shoji, and went to bed, but the lack of
privacy was fearful, and I have not yet sufficient trust in my
fellow-creatures to be comfortable without locks, walls, or doors!
Eyes were constantly applied to the sides of the room, a girl twice
drew aside the shoji between it and the corridor; a man, who I
afterwards found was a blind man, offering his services as a
shampooer, came in and said some (of course) unintelligible words,
and the new noises were perfectly bewildering. On one side a man
recited Buddhist prayers in a high key; on the other a girl was
twanging a samisen, a species of guitar; the house was full of
talking and splashing, drums and tom-toms were beaten outside;
there were street cries innumerable, and the whistling of the blind
shampooers, and the resonant clap of the fire-watchman who
perambulates all Japanese villages, and beats two pieces of wood
together in token of his vigilance, were intolerable.
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