The streets were crowded with people. Priests were passing in processions, beating their dreary tambourines; police and custom-house officers with pointed hats encrusted with lace, and carrying two sabres hung to their waists; soldiers, clad in blue cotton with white stripes, and bearing guns; the Mikado's guards, enveloped in silken doubles, hauberks and coats of mail; and numbers of military folk of all ranks--for the military profession is as much respected in Japan as it is despised in China--went hither and thither in groups and pairs. Passepartout saw, too, begging friars, long-robed pilgrims and simple civilians, with their warped and jet-black hair, big heads, long busts, slender legs, short stature and complexions varying from copper-color to a dead white, but never yellow, like the Chinese, from whom the Japanese widely differ. He did not fail to observe the curious equipages--carriages and palanquins, barrows supplied with sails and litters made of bamboo; nor the women--whom he thought not especially handsome--who took little steps with their little feet, upon which they wore canvas shoes, straw sandals and clogs of worked wood, and who displayed tight-looking eyes, flat chests, teeth fashionably blackened and gowns crossed with silken scarfs, tied in an enormous knot behind--an ornament which the modern Parisian ladies seem to have borrowed from the dames of Japan. Passepartout wandered for several hours in the midst of this motley crowd, looking in at the windows of the rich and curious shops, the jewelry establishments glittering with quaint Japanese ornaments, the restaurants decked with streamers and banners, the teahouses, where the odorous beverage was being drunk with saki, a liquor concocted from the fermentation of rice, and the comfortable smoking houses, where they were puffing, not opium, which is almost unknown in Japan, but a very fine, stringy tobacco. He went on till he found himself in the fields, in the midst of vast rice plantations. There he saw dazzling camellias expanding themselves, with flowers which were giving forth their last colors and perfumes, not on bushes, but on trees, and within bambooenclosures, cherry, plum and apple trees, which the Japanese cultivate rather for their blossoms than their fruit, and which queerly-fashioned, grinning scarecrows protected from the sparrows, pigeons, ravens and other voracious birds. On the branches of the cedars were perched large eagles. Amid the foliage of the weeping willows were herons, solemnly standing on one leg. On every hand were crows, ducks, hawks, wild birds and a multitude of cranes, which the Japanese consider sacred, and which to their minds symbolize long life and prosperity. As he was strolling along, Passepartout saw some violets among the shrubs. "Good!" said he. "I'll have some supper." But, on smelling them, he found that they were odorless. "No chance there," thought he.