ntly coloured, with huge coloured sashes.
Their little heads, with straight all-round fringes of black hair
sticking out like brushes, are deliciously comic. They regard us gravely
and without any fear or shyness.

It is getting dark; suddenly someone lights a Chinese lantern across the
street, and almost as if it were a given signal another pops out and
another and another. Chinese lanterns with us are used for decoration,
and it is impossible to help feeling as if it were a festival when we
see them gleaming along the street among the coloured streamers.

Altogether the lanterns, the gay dresses, the smiling faces, the funny
shops, the clear deep blue of a perfect evening sky seen overhead, make
a glorious picture. Shut your eyes and "think back" a moment. Think of
Oxford Street on a wet night when the shops are shut and the high
arc-lights shine down coldly on rigid lines and bleak grey walls!

[Illustration: A JAP VILLAGE.]

CHAPTER XXVIII

IN A JAPANESE INN

If we received a slight shock when we saw the woman in the shop adding
up by the help of beads, what about the booking-clerk at the station? He
seems unable to give the simplest change without this sort of reckoning.
Comic, isn't it? Picture the clerks at Euston fumbling away at their
beads while an impatient throng elbowed one another before the
pigeon-hole!

The station is quite small, merely a shed with a wooden roof set on
posts. We are going second-class and taking Yosoji with us, so that we
shall see some of the native life.

The trains are corridor, with the seats lengthwise and across the ends.
Many of the Japs are sitting sideways on them with their feet tucked
under them,--they are not used to have them hanging down,--but one grand
gentleman, directly opposite to us, is quite European in his top hat
and long coat, and his feet are on the floor as to the manner born.

We have not been long started before he begins to fidget and shuffle,
and presently he hauls up a wicker basket beside him, undoes it, and
fishes out a very nice dark purple kimono. His top hat goes into the
rack. His collar, tie, and stud disappear. His coat comes off and is
carefully folded on the seat. We watch the gradual unpeeling with an
absorbed interest, wondering how far it will go. Luckily there are no
ladies present! We can stare as much as we like without being rude,
because everyone else in the carriage has their eyes fixed with a
straight unwinking stare u