Part 25 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXVIII
IN A j.a.pANESE 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-cla.s.s 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 j.a.ps 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 upon us. It is difficult to realise that we are more entertaining to them than the gentleman who is disrobing himself with ineffable dignity in public, is to us.
He has now slipped on the kimono over his remaining garments, there is a little twist, and a slight, a very slight struggle, and in some miraculous way the rest of his European outfit glides off underneath the kimono, neatly folded. It is like a conjuring trick! Last of all come off the boots also, and with his stockinged feet tucked up under him he sits transformed into the Complete j.a.p. Judging from the lack of interest taken in the performance by his fellow-countrymen, it must be quite a usual thing to undress in trains.
Having finished his task the gentleman on the seat turns to us and asks innumerable questions. Where have we come from? Where are we going to?
How do we like j.a.pan? Is it not a very poor, mean country compared with the glorious and august land we belong to? All this is interpreted by Yosoji, who no doubt puts our answers into the flowery language j.a.panese courtesy demands; for instance, when I say that I like j.a.pan very much, I am sure, from the breathless sentence that follows, that he is saying that the strangers think the honourable country of j.a.pan far more beautiful and wonderful than their own poor land. The man opposite does not for a moment think really that England is to be compared with j.a.pan, but in j.a.pan people are taught to talk like that, and must often think us very rude and abrupt.
It is not a long journey, and after an hour or so of pa.s.sing through pretty, hilly country, with many bushy pine trees dotted about, we stop at a station which Yosoji says is our destination. It is a good thing we have Yosoji with us, for certainly we could never have discovered the name of the station for ourselves. We see a long scroll covered with Chinese characters, and other smaller scrolls ornamented in the same way, these are, of course, the name of the station and the inscriptions on various waiting-rooms, but they leave us none the wiser. I ask Yosoji how any European travelling alone could discover where he had got to, and he smilingly points out a board at the extreme end of the station with some of our own lettering on it. No one could possibly see it from the incoming train.
We still feel absurdly big as we get out of the little train on its little narrow gauge line and wait while Yosoji captures our luggage from the van. It is packed in great baskets which fit into each other like two lids; we see them in England often, but there they are rather looked down upon, here they are quite the correct thing. Indeed, among all the luggage in the van there is no trunk or wooden or tin box at all, only a great pile of such baskets of all sizes, mingled with a few bundles simply tied up. When our belongings are rescued and identified they are stowed away in a rickshaw by themselves, while we three mount in three others and set off for far the most interesting part of the journey. At first the road is quite good, and the men trot away contentedly, the big hats bobbing up and down before us. What do these hats remind you of? To me they are exactly like the lids of those galvanised dustbins you see put out in streets for the dustmen at home.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTERS, j.a.pAN.]
The air is brilliantly fresh and sweet; we pa.s.s along by pine trees of many sorts, and between them see the fresh green of the feathery bamboos; these two colours, the dark blue-green of the pines and the brilliant yellow-green of the bamboo, are seen everywhere in j.a.pan. Then there are avenues of red-stemmed trees called cryptomeria, we should say cedars, with dark heads spreading out at the top of their immense branchless stems. We see squirrels leaping about and scuttering up the trunks. Then we go across open s.p.a.ces, which are like an emerald sea, for they are the brightest green you can imagine, the green of the growing paddy, which is cultivated here as in Burma. There are men dressed in garments of glorious blue, like those we saw in Egypt, hoeing and watching the important crops. Then we plunge into cool woods and follow little paths up and down, and when we want to get out and walk, feeling lazy brutes to sit still and let a fellow-creature haul us uphill, Yosoji says no, it would hurt the feelings of our men, who would imagine we thought them poor weak things and scorned them.
We twist down to a wooden bridge, dark maroon in colour, and built in one single span across a raging, leaping stream that dashes and splashes merrily far below. At the other end is one of the picturesque roofed arches or gates that the j.a.panese are so fond of, with its rich red tiles curved up at the corners. Not far on we catch a glimpse of a waving sheet of blue, a ma.s.s of flowers growing wild on a hillside, and in sight of it, but still in the shade of the trees, we sit down for lunch and to give the coolies a rest.
Several times during the run we have noticed shrines with images of little foxes before them, some clean and new, but some weather-worn and grown over with lichen. As Yosoji unpacks the lunch he tells us these are s.h.i.+nto shrines put up in honour of the G.o.d of rice. It seems very appropriate to hear this now, just as we are going to fare merrily on hard-boiled eggs, a tiny chicken, and plenty of rice, finis.h.i.+ng up with those astonis.h.i.+ng bright-coloured cakes, which we have learnt to eat without fear. We rest a long time, and all except you smoke contentedly, watching the blue films curl upward under the still foliage; and then up and on once more.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR DINNER IN A j.a.pANESE INN.]
It is nearly five o'clock before we reach our destination, a little village, with a rather famous inn, not very far from the sea. In fact, as we approach we can see the blue water s.h.i.+ning out only about a mile away across a flat expanse broken by hummocky sandhills. The village is one long straggling street of thatched huts, rather like huge beehives, with broad eaves. Our rickshaw men, who have been showing signs of exhaustion, make a gallant effort at the last, and run us up to the door of the inn in fine style. The inn stands on legs raised a foot or two from the ground, and is well built, with solid wooden posts and a tiled roof. It is two storeys high and has verandahs round both floors.
As our men let down the shafts of the chairs for us to alight, two women and a man in native dress come out on to the verandah, and immediately fall down on their faces before us, with their foreheads on the ground.
I don't know how you feel about it, but not having been born in the purple this sort of thing is embarra.s.sing to me, and I wish they wouldn't! I have a vague idea that I ought to rise to the occasion by taking their hands and saying, ”Rise, friend, I also am mortal,” or something like that!
Yosoji, of course, does all the talking, and with a great deal of bowing and volumes of flowing language, arranges for us to stay here the night, requesting us to pa.s.s on into the house. In the porch it is evidently expected that we should take off our boots, so we do, and they are stowed away in a little pigeon-hole, while we are offered instead large and awkward pairs of slippers like those we had at the mosques. You reject them, preferring stocking feet, and you have the best of me, for the next move is to go up a very slippery ascent like a ladder that is trying to grow into a staircase. While you hop along gaily I leave one slipper behind on the last rung, and in trying to recover it slip and bark my s.h.i.+n! However, when it is retrieved, I take off the other and, carrying them both in my hand, mount quite easily.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FUJIYAMA.]
The room we go into is specklessly clean, and through the wide sliding panels, which are open on to the verandah, we see a glimpse of the blue sea. The floor is made of mattresses in wooden frames neatly fitted together, and is quite soft and comfortable to the feet; boots with heels would certainly be out of place here. In a little alcove on one side is a miniature tree such as those you sometimes see offered for sale in England now, and behind it a quite beautiful sketch of Fujiyama on a scroll. There is no other furniture at all, but when our luggage is brought up we can sit on the baskets. We explain to Yosoji that we would greatly like--first, a hot bath, after the heat and dust of the journey, and next some food. Presently in comes the little j.a.panese maid whom we saw on her face at the door in company with her master and mistress.
She prostrates herself at once, and with her forehead against the floor says something, indrawing her breath in a most accomplished hiss. Do you think we ought to do it back again?
[Ill.u.s.tration: IN COMES THE LITTLE MAID.]