pent three days,
counting coming and going four days, at Kamakura last week. It is on the
seaside and is a great resort, summer and winter, for the Japanese, and
at the hotel for Europeans over weekends. For summers the foreigners go
to the mountains, while the Japanese take to the seaside, largely
because there is more for the children to do on the seashore, but partly
because mountains seem to be an acquired taste. Kamakura is about ten
degrees warmer than Tokyo, as it is sheltered by the hills. Peas were in
blossom and the cherry trees all out. It was cold and rainy while we
were there, however, except one day, when we crowded in so much
sightseeing we got rather tired. Mamma and I are now catching up on
calls, prior to leaving and doing some sightseeing. To-day we went to a
shop where they publish very fine reproductions of the old art of Japan,
including Chinese paintings owned in Japan, much better worth buying
than the color print reproductions to my mind, though we have laid in
some reproductions of the latter. There are so many millionaires made by
the war in Japan, that lots of the old lords are selling out part of
their treasures now; prices I think are too high even for Americans. The
old Daimyo families evidently have enough business sense to take
advantage of the market, though some are hard up and sell more for that
reason. A week ago we went to an auction room where there was a big
collection of genuine old stuff, much finer than appears in the curio
shops, and this weekend there is another big sale by a Marquis. However,
it is said they keep the best things and unload on the nouveau riche;
not but what a lot of it is mighty good as it is.

My other experience that I have not written about is seeing Judo. The
great Judo expert is president of a normal school, and he arranged a
special exhibition by experts for my benefit, he explaining the theory
of each part of it in advance. It took place Sunday morning in a big
Judo hall, and there were lots of couples doing "free" work, too; they
are too quick for my eye in that to see anything but persons suddenly
thrown over somebody's back and flopped down on the ground. It is really
an art. The Professor took the old practices and studied them, worked
out their mechanical principles, and then devised a graded scientific
set of exercises. The system is really not a lot of tricks, but is based
on the elementary laws of mechanics, a study of the equilibrium of the
h