rink. Labor per
day is amazingly cheap, but, in actual results, little cheaper than
American labor.

It is amid such a maze of contradictions and surprises that one moves
in Japan. When I go into a Japanese home, for example, it is a hundred
times more important to take off my shoes than it is to take off my
hat--even though, as happened this week when I called on a celebrated
Japanese singer, there be holes in my left sock. (But I was comforted
later when I learned that on President Taft's visit to a famous Tokyo
teahouse his footwear was found to be in like plight.)

Speaking of music, we run squarely against another oddity, in that
native Japanese (as well as Chinese) music usually consists merely of
monotonous twanging on one or two strings--so that I can now
understand the old story of Li Hung Chang's musical experiences in
America. His friends took him to hear grand opera singers, to listen
to famous violinists, but these moved him not; the most gifted
pianists failed equally to interest him. But one night the great
Chinaman went early to a theatre, and all at once his face beamed with
delight, and he turned to his friends in enthusiastic gratitude: "We
have found it at last!" he exclaimed. "That is genuine music!" . . .
And it was only the orchestra "tuning up" their instruments!

I might as well say just here that this story, while good, always
struck me as a humorous exaggeration till I came to Japan, but the
music which I heard the other night in one of the most fashionable and
expensive Japanese restaurants in Tokyo was of exactly the same
character--like nothing else in all the world so much as an orchestra
tuning up! And yet by way of modification (as usual) it must be said
that appreciation of Western music is growing, and one seldom hears in
classical selections a sweeter combination of voice and piano than
Mrs. Tamaki Shibata's, while my Japanese student-friend has also
surprised me by singing "Suwanee River" and other old-time American
favorites like a genuine Southerner.

Take the social relations of the Japanese people as another {6}
example of contrariety. Here the honorable sex is not the feminine but
the masculine. There is even a proverb, I believe, "Honor men, despise
women." Perhaps the translation "despise" is too strong, but certainly
it would be regarded as nothing but contemptible weakness for young
men to show any such regard for young women, or husbands for their
wives, as is common i