On the 13th of April I said good-bye to my friends and to the comforts of the Kōbe Club, and started for Nara, stopping on my way at Osaka to have a look at the town and see the peach blossoms on Momo-Yama (peach mountain). The narrow streets leading up the hill were crowded with visitors, and among the orchards of dwarf trees temporary tea-sheds and resting-places had been erected for their comfort and refreshment. In spite of the many picturesque features in these fêtes the whole effect is at first disappointing: railings and stages of new raw deal, the untidy and unfinished look of rough bamboo structures, with corners of matting hanging loosely in places where they interfere with the perspective lines, the slovenly pathways,
[Illustration: EARLY PLUM BLOSSOMS, OKAMOTO, NEAR KŌBE]
which are mud or dust according to the weather--all these things make unsatisfactory accessories for the figures and the flowers. After a time they obtrude themselves less on your notice, and you have learned to accept the fact that Japan is not a country of big masses and broad effects, but of interesting bits and amusing details. This is usually true of its landscape; the forms of mountains and trees are more quaint than grand, and the cultivated land has no broad stretches of pasture or corn, but is cut up into patches, mainly rice-fields, with various vegetables grown in little squares here and there.
It was as yet too early in the year for any rice to be planted out. In the fertile valley through which the railway runs from Osaka to Nara some new fields were lying wet or fallow, others were being prepared by spade labor, and others again, not yet flooded, were covered with the bright green of young barley, or the strong light yellow of rape in flower.
Though I had read much about life in Japan, it was an embarrassing experience to be set down for the first time with my baggage in a Japanese room, and to try and adapt myself mentally to the possibilities of living under such conditions. In a bare hut or tent the problem is comparatively simple; there is always one way by which you must enter; but in a Japanese room there is too much liberty; three of the walls are opaque sliding screens, the fourth is a transparent, or rather translucent, one; you can come in or go out where you like; there is no table on which things must be put, no chair on which you must sit, no fireplace to stand with your back to--just a clean, matted floor and perfect freedom of choice. European trunks look hopelessly ugly and unsympathetic in such surroundings, nor are matters much improved when the host, in deference to the habits of a foreigner, sends in a rough deal table, with a cloth of unhemmed cotton, intended to be white, and an uncompromising, straight-backed deal chair. These hideous articles make a man feel ashamed, for though they are only a burlesque of our civilization, they are produced with an air of pride which shows that the owner is convinced they are the right thing, and one cannot but be humiliated by their ugliness and want of comfort. Yet if you want to read or write you have to keep them and make the best of them, for a long evening on the floor is only to be borne after a good many weeks of practice. Things begin to look brighter and pleasanter when the little waiting-maid appears, bringing first some cushions and the hibachi, with its pile of glowing charcoal, and then the tea-tray and a few sweet cakes. This was more the sort of thing I had expected, and made me at once feel at home with my surroundings. It is the first attention shown you in every tea-house, no matter how humble; whether you go as an inmate, or whether you merely sit down for a few minutes’ rest on a journey, the little tea-pot and the tiny cups are at once produced, and the hibachi is placed by your side, a pleasant and friendly welcome, which never failed to make its impression on me, however poor the quality of the tea might be. The Kiku-sui-ya (which means Chrysanthemum-water house) is near the entrance to the great Kasuga Park at Nara; just outside it the road passes under a granite torii flanked with stone lanterns, and winds up to the temple through an avenue of cryptomerias, with rows of lanterns on each side, which get closer and closer together as they near the temple buildings, and are so numerous that tradition says they have never been counted. There are booths here and there where pilgrims can rest and get a cup of tea, for pilgrimage in Japan is not made unnecessarily uncomfortable, and where the tame deer congregate to take the nuts and cakes which are sold