are entirely open on the front
_ground_ floor, and about six feet from the sill or threshold rises a
platform about a foot and a half high, upon which the proprietor may
be seen seated on his heels behind a tiny railing ten inches high,
busy with his account-books. If it is winter he is engaged in the
absorbing occupation of all Japanese tradesmen at that time of
year--warming his hands over a charcoal fire in a low brazier. The
kitchen is usually just next to this front room, often separated
from the street only by a latticed partition. In evolving a Japanese
kitchen out of his or her imagination, the reader must cast away the
rising conception of Bridget's realm. Blissful, indeed, is the thought
as I enter the Japanese hotel that neither the typical servant-girl
nor the American hotel-clerk is to be found here. The landlord comes
to meet me, and, falling on his hands and knees, bows his head to the
floor. One or two of the pretty girls out of the bevy usually seen
in Japanese hotels comes to assist me and take my traps. Welcomes,
invitations and plenty of fun greet me as I sit down to take off my
shoes, as all good Japanese do, and as those filthy foreigners don't
who tramp on the clean mats with muddy boots. I stand up unshod, and
am led by the laughing girls along the smooth corridors, across an
arched bridge which spans an open space in which is a rookery, garden,
and pond stocked with goldfish, turtles and marine plants. The room
which my fair guides choose for me is at the rear end of the house,
overlooking the grand scenery for which Kanozan is justly famous all
over the empire. Ninety-nine valleys are said to be visible from
the mountain-top on which the hotel is situated, and I suspect that
multiplication by ten would scarcely be an exaggeration. A world of
blue water and pines, and the detailed loveliness of the rolling
land, form a picture which I lack power to paint with words. The water
seemed the type of repose, the earth of motion.

Enjoying to the full that rapture of first vision which one never
feels twice, I turned and entered the room, which made up in neatness
what it lacked in luxury. Furniture in a Japanese house there is
none. Like all the others, the floor of my room was covered with soft
matting two inches thick, made into sections six feet long and three
feet wide, and bound with a black border. The dimensions of a room may
always be expressed by the number of mats. The inside of the mats is