menade deck of the _Tenyo Maru_, the air is fresh and pure, the day
bright and cheerful, and from sea and coast comes a curious mixed odour
of salt brine and pine needles.

At dusk we cast anchor in the roadstead of Kobe, where the _Tenyo Maru_
has to remain for twenty-four hours in order to take cargo on board. A
launch takes us to the busy town, and we determine to spend the night on
shore in a genuine Japanese hotel. At the entrance we are met by the
landlord, in a garment like a petticoat and a thin mantle with short
hanging sleeves. Two small waiting-maids take off our shoes and put a
pair of slippers on our feet. We go up a narrow wooden staircase and
along a passage with a brightly polished wooden floor. Outside a sliding
door we take off our slippers and enter in stocking feet. Cleanliness is
the first rule in a Japanese house, and it would be thought inexcusable
to enter a room in shoes which had lately been in the dust and dirt of
the lanes and streets.

Our rooms are divided from one another by partitions of paper or the
thinnest veneer, which can be partially drawn aside so that the rooms
may be thrown into one. Here and there mottoes are inscribed on hanging
shields, and we see that they are written in the same singular
characters as are used in China. On one wall hangs a _kakemono_, or a
long strip of paper with flowers painted in water-colours. On a small
carved wooden stool below the painting stands a dwarf tree scarcely two
feet in height. It is a cherry-tree which has been prevented from
growing to its full size, but it is a real, living tree, perhaps twenty
years old, and exactly like an ordinary cherry-tree, only so small that
it might have come from Lilliput.

The floor is laid with mats of rice straw with black borders. Each mat
is 6 feet long and 3 wide, and when a house is built the areas of the
rooms are always calculated in a certain number of mats; thus a room of
six mats is spoken of, or one of eight mats. Not infrequently the rooms
are so small that three or even two mats will cover the floor.

We take our seats crossed-legged or on our heels on small, square, down
cushions, the only furniture to be seen. A young Japanese maiden, also
in stocking feet, enters and places a stove in the middle of our circle.
There is no fireplace. This stove is shaped like a flower-pot, made of
thick metal, and is filled with fine white ashes. The young woman builds
the ashes up into a cone like the summit