A Travelling Curiosity—Rude Dwellings—Priimtive Simplicity—The Public Bath-house.

KUROISHI.

YESTERDAY was beautiful, and, dispensing for the first time with Ito's attendance, I took a kuruma for the day, and had a very pleasant excursion into a cut de sac in the mountains. The one drawback was the infamous road, which compelled me either to walk or be mercilessly jolted. The runner was a nice, kind, merry creature, quite delighted, Ito said, to have a chance of carrying so great a sight as a foreigner into a district in which no foreigner has even been seen. In the absolute security of Japanese travelling, which I have fully realised for a long time, I look back upon my fears at Kasukabé with a feeling of self-contempt.

The scenery, which was extremely pretty, gained everything from sunlight and colour—wonderful shades of cobalt and indigo, green blues and blue greens, and flashes of white foam in unsuspected rifts. It looked a simple, home-like region, a very pleasant land.

We passed through several villages of farmers who live in very primitive habitations, built of mud, looking as if the mud had been dabbed upon the framework with the hands. The walls sloped slightly inwards, the thatch was rude, the eaves were deep and covered all manner of lumber; there was a smoke-hole in a few, but. the majority smoked all over like brick-kilns; they had no windows, and the walls and rafters were black and shiny. Fowls and horses live on one side of the dark interior, and the people on the other.7 The houses were alive with unclothed children, and as I repassed in the evening unclothed men and women, nude to their waists, were sitting outside their dwellings with the small fry, clothed only in amulets, about them, several big yellow dogs forming part of each family group, and the faces of dogs, children, and people were all placidly contented! These farmers owned many good horses, and their crops were splendid. Probably on matsuri days all appear in fine clothes taken from ample hoards.