Our friend having procured Japanese clothes for us, as he had done at Loo-Choo, told us that he might venture to take us on shore and show us something of the mode of life among his countrymen. I have no doubt that Chin Chi considered it far superior to that of the English, as far as he was able to judge of them. The Japanese gentlemen were, generally, finer men than those of Loo-Choo. Their dress also was different. One of the chief people in the place, if he was not the governor, wore a gaily-coloured robe of rich silk, with the back, sleeves, and breast, covered with armorial bearings. He wore a very short pair of trousers, with black socks and straw slippers. His hat, something like a reversed bowl, shone with lacquer and ornaments of gold. I must say, however, that Europeans have no right to quiz the head covering of any nation in the world, as ours far surpass all others in ugliness, and in the want of adaptation of means to an end. Our friend could not take us publicly into the town, so he had us conveyed to his country-house in kagos, such as were used at Loo-Choo. On every side, as we passed along, the people were busily employed; some were lading their packhorses with bags of meal, others with heavy mallets were pounding grain into flour, while others were hoeing in the rice grounds up to their knees in water. There was no sign of poverty, and even the lowest people were well and comfortably clad in coarse garments, shorter than those of the more wealthy classes. All wear the hair drawn up and fastened at the top in a knot. In rainy weather they wear cloaks made of straw, so that a person looks like a thatched roof. The same sort of garments, I hear, are used by the Portuguese peasantry. The upper classes cover their robes with a waterproof cloak of oiled-paper. All, like the Chinese, use the umbrella as a guard from the sun and rain.