FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130  
131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   >>   >|  
on sale, not without reasonable hope of patronage by the guests. The _Asahi_ once facetiously reported that I had taken on a journey three _to_ (six pecks) of insect powder. The chief protector of the prudent traveller in remote Japan is a giant pillowslip of cotton. He gets into it and ties the strings together under his chin. The mats and futon of old-fashioned hotels are full of fleas. The hard cylindrical Japanese pillow has no doubt its tenants also, but I never got accustomed to using it, and laid my head on a doubled-up kneeling cushion. A foot-high partition separated the men's hot bath from the women's. My cold bath in the morning I found I had to take unselfconsciously at a water-gush in front of the house. As the food was poor here, we were glad of our tinned food and ship's biscuits. This was of course in a remote part. Apart from ordinary Japanese food, there are usually available at the inns chicken, fish of some sort, eggs, omelettes and soups. With a pot of jam or two and some powdered milk in one's bag, one can live fairly well. Fresh milk can now be got in unlikely places on giving notice overnight. It is produced for invalids and children. If one makes no fuss, remembers one is a traveller who has resolved to see rural Japan, and realises that the inn people will try to do their best, one will not fare so badly. On the railway one is well catered for by the provision of _bento_ (lunch) boxes, sold on the platforms of stations. These chip boxes contain rice (hot), cold omelette, cold fish or chicken and assorted pickles, and provide an appetising and inexpensive meal. Monkeys, bears and antelopes are shot in this district. One man spoke of a troop of eighty monkeys. In the high mountain regions there are still people who escape the census and live a wild life. The records of a gipsy folk called Sanka have a history going back 700 or 800 years. As we wound our way up and down the hill-sides we saw evidence of "fire-farming." It is the simple method by which a small tract with a favourable aspect is cleared by fire and cultivated, and then, when the fertility is exhausted, abandoned. I was assured that after fire-farming "tea springs up naturally," and that though tea-drinking may have been introduced from China there could not be such large areas of tea growing wild if tea were not indigenous. Most of our paths lay through woods and matted vegetation. I noticed that trees were often felled in
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130  
131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Japanese
 

chicken

 

people

 
farming
 

remote

 

traveller

 

monkeys

 

mountain

 

eighty

 

district


regions

 
census
 

called

 
history
 
escape
 

patronage

 

records

 

provision

 

guests

 

platforms


catered

 

railway

 

stations

 

appetising

 

inexpensive

 
Monkeys
 

provide

 

pickles

 

omelette

 

assorted


antelopes

 

introduced

 
springs
 

naturally

 

drinking

 

growing

 

noticed

 

vegetation

 

felled

 

matted


indigenous
 
assured
 

evidence

 

reasonable

 

simple

 
method
 

fertility

 
exhausted
 
abandoned
 

cultivated