Funny Japan

Southland Times, Issue 13671, 5 February 1897, Page 4

Funny Japan

(By

'G.G.,'

in Argus.)

A certain drummer bought a bicycle once from a passing ship—l can’t say why the ship bad a bicycle loose about her, bnt she had, and the drummer bought it—then he tried to ride it, and it reared up,chucked him over, and broke bis collarbone. Then the bicycle was for sale cheap, and a Japanese who wore European clothes bought it, and trained the wild animal in his back yard, When it was quite tame, and he had got accustomed to its little ways, be took it out into the open road, and mounted, whereupon—so I understood him to say—a lamp-post rots up, and went for him straight, with disastrous reeulta for him. It didn’t do the machine much harm,and he told me I could risk my valuable hfe on it if I liked, so I’m doing it. I have just come back from severs! days' wandering round the countr well off the beaten track. Just wherever tho fancy took me I slept and ate, sad I was unbothered with luggage,as at the lea-houses where I stopped I always got into Japanese drees. It is a capital way of seeing the country and the people. On arriving at a tea house it is a case of all hands down ou their kneey bending

forward iwoor thine times until sheir fore

heads nearly t uo'i ibo dick, trying ‘Ohio’ (good day) at >h« aaino t-m- ; then you take off your beo’.'/H.'d on to the ms 4 - ting. The rooms are nearly elwsys square and divided by tli io,.- p per partitions on a wooden framework. The floor is of

matting, soft and padded to walk or, and divided into squaret, which look so it they would lift in and out, and are usually bound

at the edges with a etrip of blur-. There are .abont ten of these to an eighteer-'eet square room On one of !!>'■ wal p,i? there j< a wa'l instercl of a p,r< tio wi’l be u email rtcsss with a ee* , n»m,J’y a ttuill cupboard and kilcmonop banging up. The moment you arrive, even if you only •r«p two seconds, green te> in little dolly Bancera without bacdlen. and ooniaining enough for two good sips, is produced. 'On going into the room the first thing is a mnsme, who drops on her knees as rhe enters, bearing a square wooden box, filled with what looks like white ash.and having half a dozen live coals in the centre, and four irons struck in for retting a kettle on. A mcch smaller box ia oho brongh. in containing an earthorn jar, ilao filled with live coals and whit? ash, and a hollow bamboo with a bottom to i'. This last is the smoking arrangement. A Jap pipe holds throe draws of the finest tobacco imaginable. You fill up, light by leaning forward and putting the baccy on a coal, then draw, io. bale, and knock the remains into the bamboo, and so on. Small rquare cushions are brought for you to eit on—rbout two feet square by three inches deep. Supposing it is dinner you are after, the next people to appear are a coolie and a chicken, with which he is wrestling. The coolie is dretsed usually in a diminutive loin cloth of any color, a blue jriket, very like a European coat of dungaree stuff without buttons, and short for him, and a short piece of cloth tied round, not over, hia head, the ends either being tucked in once or left sticking up. This he always removes when addressing you. Having approved of the chicken they both withdraw, and there is a pause,which I usually fill in by exploring the kitchens. These are invariably in a room at the back, without fioer or chimney,, and there is a well, with the joliiest-loqking water,although it is extremely dangerous to drink —forbidden rs in oor station orders. The fireplaces, made of eartb,or what looks like it, are in a row about 2ft. from the ground with six or seven little separate fire*.

Here you most probably meet the chicken again, his clo has having been re moved in a marvellously short space of time, and getting seven bells knocked out of him by his friend the coolie, assisted by a chunk of wood. This, I am told, is by way of making him tender. The cooks—women—are barefooted, hair elaborately done Jap. fashion, and their one garment, a kimona, usually blue with a faint white etripe, only cornea to about the knee, and is girdled about the waist with the inevitable obi. After my tour I go bock to the room end sit crosslegged or lie down, and dinner is brought on little red lacqnered trays standing on four 6io. legs. On these are four or five little round saucers, one with rice, another with green stuff like cabbage, only sweetened, another, if near the sea, contains a small fish, and so on. Seize your cbop-Bticks firmly and grab the fi«h by the tail, then start to tear him up—it’s wonderful what one can do with chopsticks—and keep the lice going ail the time as we do bread ; the plebs bring the rice saucer up to the mouth and shovel Then an article exactly like an ordinary flower-pct is brought in, and it turns out to be a regular Utile cooking apparatup ; inside, half way down, ia a perforated per. tition running across l , and at the bottom a one side is a piece that lifts up, and actu as a draught plate. The upper half is full of live coals, and on top is a small flat tin dish. A red and white ware dish, a good deal larger, perhaps as large as the ordinary wasb-bund basin only much lighter end flatter, is put alongside, and there neatly ranged all over it is our friend the chicken, raw, and in minute pieces, O.ie is su ’pored to work it oneself, I believe, but I anally turn on the mnsme who is sitting in attendance. With thecbop-stick. {ake a pieoo of fat plate and ru b

well over the tin dish, then select the pieces of chicken ypu fancy, and put them on the ditb. Those small onion stalks—leeks they are called I.think—are also put with tho chicken, so that yon cook your own meal »s you go along, and very good it is, except that tho chicken can give a gunroom one points for toughness, and the musme adds salt and sauces of sorts from little saucers alongside, and also keeps filling your rice saucer from a red lacquer box, about large enough to stow a man’s hat in, which she has alongside her. Eggs are also boiled, and ths correct thing is to break an almost raw egg over your rice and worry the lot. I manage pretty well, and cen usually depend on gtt ing4opor coot of the rice 1 leave in the dish into my mouth, the remainder being distributed over my person and the floor. I’ve often played at dolls for fun in the days of my youth, but it gets serious when one’s dinner depends on it.

After dinner the girl clears away, leaving, of courue, the fin-box aod smoking box, and makes do wo th>-beds. Be this time tberoom, as there is a certain amount of it a fixture above the eliding wafla is pretty full of smoke, which remains. The beds consist of futone, a thing very like in make and shape to what, as a youngster, I have heard celled palliasses, and one—attired for the night in a padded thick kimona—is supposed to lie on one and haul the other over. Unfortunately they are made for Japs 2ft. nothing long, so I spend the night in giving both ends of me a chance to get warm, but it is awful cold for the end that isn’t on turn to be under cover. A Jap pillow is made of wood, with a etrip of cloth on top, and usually a couple of pieces of paper over that to keep it mean. It is made to fi: the neck, as a Jap girl only does her hsir once a week, so can’t afford to rest her head on anything. Ai a rule they give amen a small bundle of rolled up paptr p'aced under the lower futoo. Tho lamps are all on the same principle, but different shapes, just a tallow dip, surrounded by paper, on the papor being the crest (Jap.) of the house. If you go out at night a round paperlamp is brought on the end of a small stick, which one bolds in front, and, consequeatly, being confused by the glare, knocks one’s feet all to pieces on the stones. Ones turned in, though, and wrestling with those wretched futons, one soon finds bow many draughts there are knocking about, ae besides the usual ones,the children (and not all of ’em young either) poke their fingers through the walls, entirely forgetting to jam another piece of paper over the hole. The result is draughts, snakes, cate, beetles stroll in and out as the fancy takes ’em. If it is cold or wef, wooden shutters are slipped outside the paper ones, but taken anyhow a Jap bouse strikes me as a flimsy production, and I am generally heartily glad when day breaks. Then breakfast, which is a repetition of dinner. Tho smells are simply awful, and the lack of clothes a trifl > startling at first. Io a very large percentage of towno there are natural baths,usually sulphur,and all bands ba'he together,, a atranger, apparently, making no difference to the rule, I don’t know whether I like the Japs or not. They are bo pleasant, so polite, but somehow I find a difficulty in taking them soriously. It’s rather like playing dolls, and the amusement begins to pall once one reachen the mature age of ten. Some of the girlr, though, are awfully pretty, but once a woman marries she shaves off her eyebrows, and black polishes her teeth, which rather tries her fatal beauty.