The Rice-Fields Were Undergoing A Second Process
Of Puddling, And Many Of The Men Engaged In It Wore Only A Hat, And
A Fan Attached To The Girdle.
An avenue of cryptomeria and two handsome and somewhat gilded
Buddhist temples denoted the approach to a place of
Some
importance, and such Takata is, as being a large town with a
considerable trade in silk, rope, and minjin, and the residence of
one of the higher officials of the ken or prefecture. The street
is a mile long, and every house is a shop. The general aspect is
mean and forlorn. In these little-travelled districts, as soon as
one reaches the margin of a town, the first man one meets turns and
flies down the street, calling out the Japanese equivalent of
"Here's a foreigner!" and soon blind and seeing, old and young,
clothed and naked, gather together. At the yadoya the crowd
assembled in such force that the house-master removed me to some
pretty rooms in a garden; but then the adults climbed on the house-
roofs which overlooked it, and the children on a palisade at the
end, which broke down under their weight, and admitted the whole
inundation; so that I had to close the shoji, with the fatiguing
consciousness during the whole time of nominal rest of a multitude
surging outside. Then five policemen in black alpaca frock-coats
and white trousers invaded my precarious privacy, desiring to see
my passport - a demand never made before except where I halted for
the night.
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