wear the
hair drawn up and fastened at the top in a knot. In rainy weather they
wear cloaks made of straw, so that a person looks like a thatched roof.
The same sort of garments, I hear, are used by the Portuguese peasantry.
The upper classes cover their robes with a waterproof cloak of
oiled-paper. All, like the Chinese, use the umbrella as a guard from
the sun and rain.

The streets are thoroughly drained, for not only are there surface
gutters, but deep drains which carry all the filth into the sea. Here,
again, they are in advance of many civilised people. Some of the best
houses are built of stone, but they are usually constructed of a
framework of bamboo and laths, which is covered with plaster painted
black and white in diagonal lines. The roofs are composed of black and
white tiles; the eaves extending low down to protect the interior from
the sun, and the oiled-paper windows from the rain. They are,
generally, of but one story. Some of the residences stand back from the
street with a court-yard before them, and have gardens behind. The
fronts of the shops have movable shutters, and behind these are sliding
panels of oiled-paper or lattices of bamboo, to secure privacy when
required. In the interior of the houses is a framework raised two feet
from the ground, divided by sliding panels into several compartments,
and spread with stuffed mats; it is the guest, dining, and sleeping-room
of private houses, and the usual workshop of handicraftsmen--a house
within a house. When a nobleman travelling stops at a lodging-house,
his banner is conspicuously displayed outside, while the names of
inferior guests are fastened to the door-posts. The doctor made a
capital sketch of a scene we saw when looking into the interior of a
Japanese house--a servant apparently feeding two children.

A Japanese has only one wife, consequently women stand far higher in the
social scale than among other Eastern people. They have evening
parties, when tea is handed round; and the guests amuse themselves with
music and cards. Japanese ladies have an ugly custom of dyeing their
teeth black, by a process which at the same time destroys the gums. The
more wealthy people have suburban villas, the gardens of which are
surrounded by a wall, and laid out in the Chinese style, with
fish-ponds, containing gold and silver fish, bridges, pagoda-shaped
summer-houses and chapels, beds of gay-coloured flowers, and dwarf
fruit-trees.

A