walk through the shady
lanes between the tree-studded homesteads or along the road passing
between plots of mulberry, tea, vegetables or grain, cultivated with
the care given to plants in a garden. In the herbage by the roadside,
but not among the crops I need hardly say, I noticed dandelions, sow
thistles, Scots thistles, plantains and some other familiar weeds.

In the paddies some men wore only a narrow band of red cotton between
their legs joined to a waist string, which, though convenient wear in
paddies, was comically conspicuous. I recall a friend's story of a
little foreign girl of seven who stayed with her mother in a Japanese
hamlet and struck up a friendship with a kindly old peasant. One hot
summer day the child came home carrying all her scanty garments over
her arm, and covered with mud to the waist. In answer to her mother's
enquiries the child said, "Well, mother, Ito San has all his clothes
off, and I could not go into the paddy to help him with mine on."

I visited an elementary school which was little more than a shed. The
roofing was of bark and the paper-covered window shutters were of the
roughest. It said much for the stamina of the children that they could
sit there in bleak weather. An attempt had been made to shut off the
classes from one another by pieces of thin cotton sheeting fastened to
a string. But such essential furniture, from a hygienic point of view,
as benches with backs had been provided, for it is considered by the
national educational authorities that kneeling in the Japanese manner
is inimical to physical development. I noticed, also, that when the
children sang they had been taught to place their hands on their hips
in order that their chests might benefit from the vocal exercise. The
earnestness and kindliness of the men and women teachers were evident.
All the teachers came to school bare-foot on _geta_.[210]

The sea was not far off and we went to the beach where there was
nothing between us and America. My companion and I were carried over
shallows on the backs of fishermen, wonderful bronze-coloured figures.
Above high-water mark heaps of small fish were drying. They were to be
turned into oil and fish-waste manure. I saw an earthenware vase with
a hole in the bottom like a flowerpot and found that it was used, with
a rope attached to the rim, for catching octopus. When the octopus
comes across such a vase on the sea bottom he regards it as a shelter
constructed on exac