The building occupied as the legation was part of a Buddhist temple, Tô-zen-ji, behind which lay a large cemetery. But our part of it had never been devoted to purposes of worship. Every large temple in Japan has attached to it a suite of what we might call state apartments, which are used only on ceremonial occasions once or twice in the year, but from time immemorial it has been the custom to accommodate foreign embassies in these buildings. A suitable residence for a foreign representative could not otherwise have been found in Yedo. As a general rule every Japanese, with the exception of the working classes, lives in his own house, instead of renting it as do most residents in an European capital. The only purely secular buildings large enough to lodge the British Minister and his staff were the _Yashiki_ or "hotels" of _Daimiôs_, but the idea of expropriating one of these nobles in order to accommodate a foreign official was probably never mooted. There remained, therefore, only the "state apartments" of some large monastery as a temporary residence until a site could be obtained and the necessary buildings constructed. Consequently there was no ground for the reproach which one writer at least has urged against the foreign ministers, that by turning sacred edifices into dwelling-houses they had insulted the religious feelings of the Japanese people. In the early years of our intercourse with Japan it is true that we were regarded as unwelcome "intruders," but in native opinion we "polluted" the temples by our presence no more than we should have "polluted" any other residence that might have been assigned to us. Tô-zen-ji lay in the suburb of Takanawa fronting the seashore, and was therefore conveniently situated for communication with our ships, the smallest of which could anchor just inside the forts, at a distance of perhaps a mile and a half. Owing, however, to the shallowness of the bay, boats were unable to get up to the landing place at low tide, and the assistance which could have been rendered by a gunboat in the event of a sudden attack, such as had been experienced in 1861, was absolutely _nil_. There remained, however, the comfort derived from knowing that a refuge lay at no great distance, and no doubt the appearance of a gunboat within the line of forts that had been built to keep out foreign fleets produced a considerable moral effect upon the general population, though desperadoes of the sort that assaulted the guard in July 1861 would certainly have been no whit deterred by any number of threatening men-of-war which could not reach them. Behind the house there was a small ornamental garden with an artificial pond for gold fish, on the opposite side of which rose a hill covered with pine-trees. A good way off from the quarters of the minister, and at the back of the cemetery belonging to the temple, there was a small house named Jô-tô-an, which was occupied by the senior chancery assistant. A tall bamboo fence cut us off entirely from this part of the grounds, and joined the house at either end. The rooms were not spacious, and very little attempt had been made to convert them into comfortable apartments. I think there was an iron stove or two in the principal rooms, but elsewhere the only means of warming was a Japanese brasier piled up with red hot charcoal, the exhalations from which were very disagreeable to a novice. The native who wraps himself up in thick wadded clothes and squats on the floor has no difficulty in keeping himself warm with the aid of this arrangement, over which he holds the tips of his fingers. His legs being crumpled up under him, the superficies he presents to the cold air is much less than it would be if he sat in a chair with outstretched limbs in European fashion. To protect himself against draughts he has a screen standing behind him, and squats on a warm cushion stuffed with silk wool. These arrangements enable him even in winter to sit with the window open, so long as it has a southern aspect, and foreigners who adopt the same system have made shift to get on. But if you are going to live in Japan in European style, you must, in order to be moderately warm during the winter months, replace the paper of the outer wooden slides with glass, stop up the openwork above the grooves in which the slides work that divide the rooms, and either build a fireplace or put up an American stove. But even all this will not make you thoroughly comfortable. Underneath you there are thick straw mats laid upon thin and badly jointed boarding, through which the cutting north-west wind rises all over the floor, while the keen draughts pierce through between the uprights and the shrunken lath-and-plaster walls.