y will pray too and go to the
tea-gardens."

Now you might wall an Englishman about with cherry trees in bloom from
head to heel, and after the first day he would begin to complain of the
smell. As you know, the Japanese arrange a good many of their festivals
in honour of flowers, and this is surely commendable, for blossoms are
the most tolerant of gods.

The tea-house system of the Japanese filled me with pleasure at a
pleasure that I could not fully comprehend. It pays a company in Osaka
to build on the outskirts of the town a nine-storied pagoda of wood and
iron, to lay out elaborate gardens round it, and to hang the whole with
strings of blood-red lanterns, because the Japanese will come wherever
there is a good view to sit on a mat and discuss tea and sweetmeats and
_saki_. This Eiffel Tower is, to tell the truth, anything but pretty,
yet the surroundings redeem it. Although it was not quite completed,
the lower storeys were full of tea-stalls and tea-drinkers. The men and
women were obviously admiring the view. It is an astounding thing to see
an Oriental so engaged; it is as though he had stolen something from a
sahib.

From Osaka--canal-cut, muddy, and fascinating Osaka--the Professor,
Mister Yamagutchi,--the guide,--and I took train to Kioto, an hour from
Osaka. On the road I saw four buffaloes at as many rice-ploughs--which
was noticeable as well as wasteful. A buffalo at rest must cover the
half of a Japanese field; but perhaps they are kept on the mountain
ledges and only pulled down when wanted. The Professor says that what I
call buffalo is really bullock. The worst of travelling with an accurate
man is his accuracy. We argued about the Japanese in the train, about
his present and his future, and the manner in which he has ranged
himself on the side of the grosser nations of the earth.

"Did it hurt his feelings very much to wear our clothes? Didn't he rebel
when he put on a pair of trousers for the first time? Won't he grow
sensible some day and drop foreign habits?" These were some of the
questions I put to the landscape and the Professor.

"He was a baby," said the latter, "a big baby. I think his sense of
humour was at the bottom of the change, but he didn't know that a nation
which once wears trousers never takes 'em off. You see 'enlightened'
Japan is only one-and-twenty years old, and people are not very wise at
one-and-twenty. Read Reed's _Japan_ and learn how the change came about.
There wa