The single cherries are now over, and the long double ones beginning. They are rose pink and really as big as small rambler roses, each head hanging down on its long stalk. The rich clusters on the branches are quite unimaginably beautiful; could one suppose the kisses of tiny children materialised and hung by fairies against the blue sky, one might well believe the cherry flowers to be the kisses of all the golden-haired pink-cheeked babies.
=April 24.=--Friday again--how fast and furious fly the weeks, and there are only four in a month, four and a few days ōmaki. When they give you a one-sen present after a five-dollar purchase, they call it ōmaki here, and many a sen have I received that way. I wish Nature would give me a few years ōmaki here and now, I want to stay here longer. I went to lunch at the Faculty, the first of the term. Professor _S----_ very nice; afterwards I went to inquire how Professor _F----_ was, but he was too ill to see me.
=April 25.=--Saturday. Fossil-cutting all morning. The double cherries are now beginning and are showing masses of colour between the trees of single cherry, which are quite green. Pansies are everywhere in the little shops, and so are gold-fish. Many small shops have suddenly added glass globes of gold-fish to their wares; the white glass sparkles in the sun, and the fish are very bright and pretty. They are very clever at grafting gold-fish. One may get them with two or more tails so neatly grafted on that the creatures live very happily, and look quite as though they had been born so, and were rather proud of it than otherwise.
=April 26.=--A very beautiful sunny day. I dried my hair in my little garden--it will break my heart to leave this house and garden, there is no doubt about it. It isn’t more than 20 yards square, but it is full of features--two ponds, a river, stepping-stones, woodland glades, pansy beds, and tiny grass plots. As I sit in it and look over the roof of my tiny house I see the blue sky through a group of tall cryptomerias, with a tall silver ash stem, a maple and chestnut clothed in vivid green to throw up their blackness in strong relief. I picked the dead flowers off the blooming plants, and then set out with sandwiches and some writing to the woods, which I was optimistic enough to expect to find in Tokio! And I found them! Within half an hour of my house I came upon a sudden steep track off the high road, and followed it into a wood on a hill, where I lay all day, with a vast panorama of green valleys below my feet, violets and wild wistaria around me, and pine trees over my head, and no human being near me all the time. Thank God for the quiet woods. It is the best source of strength and comfort I know, to lie on a hill alone all day.