we met with a
company of strolling players: a man, his wife and two girls, all with
clever faces. We also saw several peasant anglers fishing or going
home with their catch. A licence available from July to December cost
50 sen.

At a shop I made a note of its signs, the usual strips of white wood
about 8 ins. by 3, nailed up perpendicularly, with the inscriptions
written in black. One sign was the announcement of the name and
address of the householder, which must be shown on every Japanese
house. A second stated that the place was licensed as a shop, a third
that the householder's wife was licensed to keep an inn, a fourth that
the householder was a cocoon merchant, a fifth that he was a member of
the co-operative credit society, a sixth that he belonged to the Red
Cross Society, a seventh that his wife was a member of the Patriotic
Women's Society,[188] the eighth, ninth and tenth that the shopkeeper
was an adherent of a certain Shinto shrine, a member of a Shinto
organisation and had visited three shrines and made donations to them.
An eleventh board proclaimed that he was of the Zen sect of Buddhism.
Finally, there was a box in which was stored the charms from various
shrines.

We passed a company of villagers working on the road for the local
authority. The labourers were chiefly old people and they were taking
their task very easily. Farther along the road men and women were
working singly. It seemed that the labourers belonged to families
which, instead of paying rates, did a bit of roadmending. The work was
done when they had time to spare.

For some time we had been in a part of the country in which the ridges
of the houses were of tiles. At an earlier stage of our journey they
had been either of straw or of earth with flowers or shrubs growing in
it. The shiny, red-brown tiles give place elsewhere to a
slate-coloured variety. The surface of all of these tiles is so
smooth that they are unlikely to change their hard tint for years.
Meanwhile they give the villages a look of newness. Their use is
spreading rapidly. Shiny though the tiles may be, one cannot but
admire the neat way in which they interlock. One day when I wondered
about the cost involved in recovering roofs with these tiles, a woman
worker who overheard me promptly said that, reckoning tiles and
labour, the cost was 60 or 70 sen per 22 tiles. In the old days tiled
porticoes were forbidden to the commonalty. They were allowed only to
daimyos