. When an inferior meets a superior, the former makes a
low bow till the fingers almost touch the ground. Both sexes, both at
home and abroad, go with the head uncovered, and to protect them from
the sun they use large fans or paper umbrellas. The military, however,
wear hats.

The Japanese are fond of field-sports, and the nobles go out shooting on
their estates much in the same way that gentlemen in England do on
theirs. They, as do the Chinese, also hunt game with hawks and falcons.
The birds are trained much as they were in England in former days, when
the gentle craft, as it was called, was fashionable among the nobles and
gentry of the land. The accompanying drawing, which was given to me to
put into my journal, gives a good idea of the Chinese way of hunting
with the falcon.

The houses we visited were very curious. They are chiefly of unpainted
wood; even the outsides are formed of sliding panels. There is
generally an inside lining at a distance of about six feet or so, the
space forming a sort of balcony. All the rooms are formed in the same
way, with sliding panels. The windows are composed of oiled paper,
fastened to neat frames with a glue which water cannot melt. The panels
which divide the chambers are ornamented with paintings of various
animals--tortoises, cranes, butterflies, and wonderfully unreal
monsters. Mats, about half an inch thick, cover the floors. In the
centre is a square place for a wood fire, when a _brazero_ is not used.
No chairs or tables are employed in ordinary houses, as the inhabitants
sit on the mats round their trays at dinner or when drinking tea; and at
night, mattresses are spread on the floor, covered with cotton, crape,
or silk. The day garment is then thrown off, and a wadded dressing-gown
put on for the night. The Japanese pillow is a little lacquered box
with drawers in it, in which the ladies keep various small articles for
their toilet--paper, hair-arrows, pins, etcetera. In the top of this
curious box is a concavity with a little cushion wrapped in clean paper,
and on this the back of the head is rested. Thus their head-dresses are
not tumbled at night. The inhabitants of the Fiji Islands use a similar
pillow for the same object of preventing their elaborately-dressed hair
from being disarranged. The Japanese, however, only sleep for a short
period at a time, as they have the custom of having trays with
sweetmeats by their bed-sides, which they eat oc