We had to walk home, and came through the outer palace gardens and under the ancient Japanese gates, lovely in the moonlight, and palpitating with the lives of the past.
=May 5.=--The weather cleared up nicely and I set off gaily on my bicycle, but a dozen things went wrong with it, and I left it at a shop, hoping they would steal it, and I should never see it again. I cut fossils all day without seeing a soul to speak a word to, and went back to the shop and found they had not stolen the bicycle, but had put it right, so that it went quite well. I set off on it to cross Tokio and call on Miss H----, who had a private view of some copper-plate etchings done by a friend of hers, and very charming they were. The roads of Tokio should be simply blood-curdling. There is no rule for the traffic, the electric cars are the only things that keep any kind of order, and foot-passengers and playing children simply swarm. Fortunately there are few carts or carriages, but those few dart about anyhow, and the horses often run away. One has simply to thread one’s way through this stream of things. The children are particularly trying, and take no notice of violent bells and shouts.
=May 8.= Professor _M----_ came to take me to the Faculty lunch. A serio-comic incident happened just before we started. He came for me to the fossil laboratory, and waited a minute while I was finishing a stone. As he stood there, a stone, which I was heating in molten zinc, exploded, and the zinc flew in drops all over the room, and settled on all of us, but fortunately only on our clothes. The bright hard drops looked quite funny on his coat and hat, and some of them wouldn’t peel off. There must have been some internal moisture or gas in the stone; it is the first time such a thing has happened. After lunch Professor _S----_ took me and Professor _Y----_ to see his garden (he lives within easy walking distance of the University), and it was a delightful sight. I have described the house and garden before, and now it was gay with pink roses and many different coloured azaleas. His tiny daughter was running about with “bells on her shoes.” Little bells were fastened on the under-side of the wooden clog, “on the same principle,” the Professor said, “as the bell is round the neck of a kitten--it is convenient to know where it is.”