ure in the Valley of Yasose-gawa is certainly
something of a masterpiece in this direction; nothing could well be more
tranquil than an oblong bowlder with the faintest chiselling of a mouth
and nose, poised on the top of an upright slab of stone rudely chipped
into a dim semblance of the human form.

A mile or two farther and my day's ride of forty-six miles terminates at
the village of Saka-no-shita. A comfortable yadoya awaits me here, no
better nor worse, however, than almost every Jap village affords; but on
the Tokaido the innkeepers are more accustomed to European guests than
they are south of Kobe. Every summer many European and American tourists
journey between Yokohama and Kobe by jinrikisha.

At this yadoya I first become acquainted with that peculiar institution
of Japan, the blind shampooer. Seated in my little room, my attention is
attracted by a man who approaches on hands and knees, and butts his
shaven pate accidentally against the corner of the open panel that forms
my door. He halts at the entrance and indulges in the pantomime of
pinching and kneading his person; his mission is to find out whether I
desire his services. For a small gratuity the blind shampooer of Japan
will rub, knead, and press one into a pleasant sensation from head to
foot. This office is relegated to sightless individuals or ugly old
women; many Japs indulge in their services after a warm bath, finding the
treatment very pleasant and beneficial, so they say.

One of the most amusing illustrations of Jap imitativeness is displayed
in the number of American clocks one sees adorning the walls of the
yadoyas in nearly every village. The amusing feature of the thing is that
the owners of these time-pieces seem to have the vaguest ideas of what
they are for. One clock on the wall of my yadoya indicates eleven
o'clock, another half-past nine, and a third seven-fifteen as I pull out
in the morning. Other clocks through the village street vary in similar
degree. Watching out for these widely varying clocks as I wheel through
the villages has come to be one of the diversions of the day's ride.

The road averages good, although somewhat hilly in places, from Saka-no
through lovely valleys and pine-clad mountains to Yokka-ichi. Yokka-ichi
is a small seaport, whence most travellers along the Tokaido take passage
to Miya in the steam passenger launches plying between these points. The
kuruma road, however, continues good to the Ku-wana, ten