=September 7.=--I left early for Shiroi, a small village which is largely pure Aino. A contingent saw me off at Sapporo, and I was extremely sorry to say farewell to some of them; but to be alone once more is a real pleasure. At Shiroi I saw all there was to be seen; the little straw homes and boats (it is a fishing village) of the Aino are very different from those of the Japanese.
Some of the Aino are extremely picturesque and dignified-looking, their long, thick, black hair standing out all round their patriarchal heads. They are not all small; most of the men I have seen are taller than I am, and very thick-set. The women are terribly disfigured by green tattoo marks on their faces, the most essential of which is the one across the lips, which has the appearance of a moustache. One or two of the young women who have not been tattooed are very handsome. They are a fundamentally different race from the Japanese, and there is very good evidence that they are actually descended from the stone-tool using people, who once covered all the Japanese islands.
I came on to Noboribetsu to spend the night. It is about ten miles from the station, and to it runs the first road I have yet seen outside a village. Such a road! It is a marvel to me how we ever got out of its swamps and ruts, and how the wheels could all be at such extremely various and varying angles without coming off. Half-way there it got dark, and the rest of the journey we went tearing down little slopes or crashing and jolting over the ruts, when there was only a margin of about a foot between us and a ravine. Yet nothing happened.
=September 8.=--I spent last night in the crater of a semi-active volcano! Yet it was not so thrilling as it sounds. The crater is nearly a mile across, and much of it is just like a deep-wooded circular valley, in which are a little hotel and one or two houses. Only a couple of hundred yards or so away from the hotel the active part remains, however, and there are vents and small cones, bubbling streams of boiling water, and piles of sulphur in any quantity. Some of the boiling basins are black and solid-looking, and some frisky with little geysers--most of them tame enough for close acquaintance, but a few dangerous and impossible to approach. As I look out on the hotel garden the steam rises in thick clouds from the boiling stream bubbling through it, which is utilised for baths. The Guide-book naively says: “The only drawback to a visit to the springs of Noboribetsu is the chance of meeting naked bathers.” I would say “_certainty_ of meeting.” But I got off quite alone and went up through the woods, following a track of course--it would be mad to leave it here--and saw three snakes in an hour, one nearly 4 feet long hardly moved from the path. I met an Aino, tattooing and all, and we exchanged a few courtesies in bad Japanese. Aino itself is a curiously hard language, nearly all _k’s_.