In These Yadoyas Every
Sound Is Audible, And I Hear Low Rumbling Of Mingled Voices, And
Above All The Sharp Hai, Hai Of The Tea-House Girls In Full Chorus
From Every Quarter Of The House.
The habit of saying it is so
strong that a man roused out of sleep jumps up with Hai, Hai, and
often, when I speak to Ito in English, a stupid Hebe sitting by
answers Hai.
I don't want to convey a false impression of the noise here. It
would be at least three times as great were I in equally close
proximity to a large hotel kitchen in England, with fifty Britons
only separated from me by paper partitions. I had not been long in
bed on Saturday night when I was awoke by Ito bringing in an old
hen which he said he could stew till it was tender, and I fell
asleep again with its dying squeak in my ears, to be awoke a second
time by two policemen wanting for some occult reason to see my
passport, and a third time by two men with lanterns scrambling and
fumbling about the room for the strings of a mosquito net, which
they wanted for another traveller. These are among the ludicrous
incidents of Japanese travelling. About five Ito woke me by saying
he was quite sure that the moxa would be the thing to cure my
spine, and, as we were going to stay all day, he would go and fetch
an operator; but I rejected this as emphatically as the services of
the blind man! Yesterday a man came and pasted slips of paper over
all the "peep holes" in the shoji, and I have been very little
annoyed, even though the yadoya is so crowded.
The rain continues to come down in torrents, and rumours are hourly
arriving of disasters to roads and bridges on the northern route.
I. L. B.
LETTER XXVII
Good-tempered Intoxication - The Effect of Sunshine - A tedious
Altercation - Evening Occupations - Noisy Talk - Social Gathering -
Unfair Comparisons.
SHIRASAWA, July 29.
Early this morning the rain-clouds rolled themselves up and
disappeared, and the bright blue sky looked as if it had been well
washed. I had to wait till noon before the rivers became fordable,
and my day's journey is only seven miles, as it is not possible to
go farther till more of the water runs off. We had very limp,
melancholy horses, and my mago was half-tipsy, and sang, talked,
and jumped the whole way. Sake is frequently taken warm, and in
that state produces a very noisy but good-tempered intoxication. I
have seen a good many intoxicated persons, but never one in the
least degree quarrelsome; and the effect very soon passes off,
leaving, however, an unpleasant nausea for two or three days as a
warning against excess. The abominable concoctions known under the
names of beer, wine, and brandy, produce a bad-tempered and
prolonged intoxication, and delirium tremens, rarely known as a
result of sake drinking, is being introduced under their baleful
influence.
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