LIFE IN JAPAN.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1522, 12 March 1886, Page 3

LIFE IN JAPAN.

Akita lies on the Japan Sea, on the ! coast of Japan's ruaiu Lland. It ia 700 ! miles by sea, or 400 by land from j Yokohama. Tois by sea is usually a ; fmrjdays' journey, by land it will re- ' quire eight. In latitude we are on the I same parallel as New York city, three degieas north of San Francisco. The nearness of the sea on every side makes this climate quite different from the most of the United States. There is more rain and snow he r e and the changes are not so sudden. Snow falls f>ur or five teet deep and the peoI pl<> |ile it up on each side of the path | rill it becomes higher than their heads, | for th< re is uo general thaw till spring. J The streets are impassable except a I narrow path in the middle. On either side the snow is solidly packed, eight or ten feet high, while the zigzag path causes many falls. The children mak>) forts and houses out of the masses of snow and even a man cau enter ona of these toy snow houses, as I proved by experiment. Before each door a yet narrower path is dug out to the road, while the pile of snow helps to keep the houses warm. In summer the Japanese ride in a jinrikaha (a large siz-d baby carriage) pulled by a man in the shafts; in the winter he rides in a sled pushed by a coolie. One day last winter I noticed in one place that the path had not been shovelled out, and the street was several feet beneath me. Presently I was on a lovel with the roof of the one-story houses, and by turning out of the road a little 1 found myself on the roof and heard voices beneath. A path so narrow that but one person can edge along in it at a time led to the door, and the interior must certainly have beeH very dark. The houses are almost all of one story, built of thin lumber and burn down quickly. There have been several large fires here this fall, of incenii* ary origin, and the people seem to be too poor to rebuild, txcept the houses used by merchants. Thieves pet houses on fire, so as to steal. Our ear-pei-ter was bu'ned out a few nights ago, and some of the goods he saved from the flames were taken by thieves. The facilities for extinguishing are but a little superior to thoee of the Western village, where a man made application for insurance and the agent wrote ing what means the town had for putting out fires. "It rains sometimes," was the ansiver. Although this is a city of -10,000 inhabitants it has only little band-engines, about five feet long which two or three men can work. The firemen are very brave, but the fires do not seem to mind them Vdiy well, and generally are stopped by " go-downs" a term applied to fire* proof houses built of mud, which, consequently, do not " go-up" in a fire.

NATIVE DBESB. In the winter the native dress is thickly padded with cotton, but too

feet have nothing better than a double cotton sock for the wealthy and not that for the majority. It is very common to see men with bare feet or with merely a straw sandal, pedling their wares or pushing a more fortunate native in a sled. The foreign costume is winning its way, and just now is strongly on the increase from a popular demand and from an order from the Government that all officials, even the servants attached to officers, shall wear foreign clothing after the Ist of next April. The native dress is exceedingly cumbersome ; the men have skirts, and the women's close-fitting shirts prevent a full step; they can only shuffle along. The first thing a Japanese usually adopts is the foreign hat; it is more convenient than carrying an umbrella in summer and more comfortable than being bareheaded in winter. Sometimes we meet a man with shoes and hat while the rest of his dress is Japanese.