suffers, for the largest leaf has usually the best cup
quality. If teas were bought for cup quality only they might be at
least from 5 to 10 per cent. cheaper.

FOOTNOTES:

[201] At many stations one used to have handed into the carriage for
less than a penny a pot of tea and a cup--you are entitled to keep
both pot and cup if you like. The tea-seller's kettle of water is kept
hot with charcoal. Tea is freshly infused in each customer's pot.

[202] For statistics and theine percentages, see Appendix LVII.

EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO

CHAPTER XXXIV

A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS

(CHIBA)

What was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided
excursions and gleaned as industry should find or chance should
offer.--JOHNSON

When I first went to Chiba, the peninsular prefecture lying across the
bay from Tokyo, many carriages in the trains were heated by iron
_hibachi_[203]with pieces of old carpet thrown over them. It is on the
Chiba trains that the recruits of that section of the army which has
to do with the operation of the railways learn their business. It is
in part of Chiba--and also in a district in Tokyo prefecture--that the
earliest rice is grown. Chiba also contains more poultry than any
other prefecture.[204] It has the further distinction of having tried
to issue truthful crop statistics.[205]

Wherever one goes in Japan one is impressed by the large consumption
of fish--fresh, dried, and salted. Thin slices of raw fish make one of
the tasty dishes at a Japanese meal. The foreigner, forgetting the
Western relish for oysters and clams, is repelled by this raw fish,
but a liking for it seems to be quickly acquired. In Tokyo the slices
of raw fish are cut from the meaty bonito (tunny), but _tai_ (bream)
is also used. Bonito also provides the long narrow steaks, dried to a
mahogany-like hardness, which are known as _katsubushi_. This
_katsubushi_ keeps indefinitely and is grated or shaved with a kind
of plane and used much as the Western cook employs Parmesan cheese.

I heard a man in Chiba combating very strongly the idea of there being
a connection between leprosy and fish eating. As to leprosy, it is
doubtful if the belief expressed by the Chinese name for the disease,
"heavenly punishment," has disappeared. There are at least 24,000
lepers in Japan, and as a well-known Japanese work of reference
casually remarks, "the hospitals can at present accommodate only 5 per
cent. of them.