=December 8.=--To-day was wet and cold, so I stopped at home (it was Sunday) and had visitors in the afternoon. We have had some frightfully cold weather these last few days, and my furs are very useful. One curious thing that I have noticed here, the gravel of the path to the Institute is lifted several inches up in the air by little delicate ice pillars, and these support the pebbles and sheets of mud so that the path looks quite as usual until one treads on it, when, of course, down one goes. The pillars are of clear ice, 1 or 2 inches high, and less than a pencil stem in thickness, growing in a forest like moss together. They even raise very heavy slabs of solid stone 20 or 30 pounds in weight, but they only come when the night is clear and still.
=December 11.=--A beautiful, warm, sunny day, the sky as blue as midsummer and the air sweet. At the Institute doing nothing worth recording in the day-time. In the evening I had been asked to give a short address to some of the students of the Law Department of the Imperial University. I spent more than an hour getting there, for “No. 3” _Y----_ Street represents at least thirty houses, as is so often the case in Tokio, so that one must go from door to door asking the householder’s name. Indeed, this is a “Land of Approximate Time.”
The club was small and very jolly, and I quite enjoyed the evening. There was only one Japanese lady there, the mother of one of the students, who was herself half German. She was very charming and much more intelligent-looking than the pure Japanese women. There was a small earthquake this evening.
=December 12.=--Another earthquake this morning! but quite small, and still a third at midday, also too small to be any fun. We are having lovely, hot, sunny weather, and for the first time there were a number of house flies in my room.
=December 13.=--A bright sunny day with a clear blue sky and ice pillars on the ground--such heavenly weather that I hated to remain in the Institute. Dinner with the G----s at the Embassy in the evening.
=December 17.=--The machinery for the fossils is now installed and very fine it is. It is far and away more compact, more ingeniously contrived, and grander than our English outfit. I have been endlessly astonished at the resource displayed by Professor _F----_ in the whole business.