H.B.M.'s Legation, Yedo,

May 27.

So far I am not much pleased with the climate. There is no elasticity in the air. It has been warm and damp ever since I came, with a sky either covered with masses of clouds or suffused with a grey mist. Friday was admitted by everybody to be a wretched day, with lifeless heat and a continuous drizzle.

In the afternoon I drove to the Foreign Concession to pay some visits. We passed miles of yashikis and enclosed vacant spaces, where yashikis once were; crossed rivers, moats, and canals; saw hundreds of boats with thatched roofs lying on water or mud, smelt villanous smells from crowded canals and open black drains; saw coolies in umbrella hats and straw rain cloaks, and all the world carrying paper umbrellas; saw a street, a hive of busy, crowded industries, the lower front of each house a shop, whose novel and ingenious wares amazed me; saw women with bright complexions, shining hair, shaven eyebrows and blackened teeth, clattering and tottering on high clogs; saw kurumas with their passengers completely hidden by envelopes of yellow oiled paper;—but saw never a horse or horse-carriage!

Tsukiji (“filled-up land”) is the Concession in which alone foreigners may live who are not in Japanese employment. The land is raised upon a fine embankment facing the gulf near the entrance of the Sumida River, and is elsewhere moated in by canals crossed by several bridges. As a place for foreign trade Tôkiyô has proved a complete failure. There are very few foreign merchants, and the foreign hotels are insignificant and little patronised.