l, in his delightful "Reminiscences of Lafcadio Hearn,"
describes him leaping from the table, darting to the window, and making
for the garden, on catching sight of a young lady tourist, a friend of
Professor Foxwell's, at the farther end of the room.

Next morning, as arranged, Kazuo Koizumi arrived to escort us to Nishi
Okubo. That particular Sunday was the anniversary of the Festival of the
Spring Equinox (_Shunki Korei-sai_). There is an autumn and a spring
equinox festival when days and nights are equal. The pullulating
population of Tokyo seemed to have emptied itself, like a rabbit warren,
into the streets. The ladies were in their best _kimonos_, their hair
elaborately dressed, set round with pins, and the men, some of them
bareheaded, Japanese fashion, in Japanese garb, others wearing bowler
hats, others again dressed in ill-fitting American clothes, carrying
American umbrellas. These umbrellas, I think, are one of the features
that you resent most in the occidentalising of the Japanese man and
woman. A pretty _musume's_ ivory-coloured oval face against the
cream-colour background of an oiled-paper Japanese umbrella, makes a
delightful picture, and nothing can be imagined more fantastically
picturesque than a Tokyo street in brilliant sunshine, or under a flurry
of rain when hundreds of these ineffective shelters with their quaint
designs of chrysanthemums, cherry-blossom, or wisteria, are suddenly
opened. Alas! in ten years' time, like many other quaint and beautiful
Japanese productions, these oil-paper umbrellas will have passed away
into the region of faintly-remembered things.

The gentle decorous politeness of the crowd was remarkable. If any of
the men had a little too much _sake_ on board, their tipsiness was only
betrayed by their aimlessly happy, smiling expression. Sometimes,
indeed, it could only be guessed at by the gentle sway of a couple
walking arm-in-arm down the street. In the luke-warm air was a mingling
of odours peculiar to Japan, smells of _sake_, smells of seaweed soup,
smells of _daikon_ (the strong native radish), and, dominating all, a
sweet, thick, heavy scent of incense that floated out from the shadows
behind the temple doors, while above all was a speckless azure sky
arching this fantastical world. The city lay glorified in a joy of
sunshine.

Kazuo Koizumi had told us that it was only a short walk to the trams,
and that by them we could get close to Nishi Okubo. It seemed to us