It is still quite early when the large, heavy barouche belonging to our legation comes to fetch me, and the two strong, well-bred, native horses have hard work to get through the snow-covered streets. Our way is uninteresting; the thoroughfares are too wide altogether, and the small houses on both sides are dwarfed and insignificant. But we also pass some large modern buildings, American brick-and-steel erections. These are public offices and banks, and make a rather unpleasant contrast in the calm scenery. For some time we skirt a large canal partly frozen over; this forms the outer moat of the Imperial castle. We stop before a large gate. It is opened at once, and a detachment of small but well-set-up Japanese soldiers present arms. Next comes a bridge, a new stone construction, ornamented with huge candelabra, without much architectural beauty, and without any Japanese flavour. But it leads to a magnificent avenue of cryptomerea, each tree a giant, and all of them of venerable age, their trunks covered with dark moss, and their foliage forming an emerald arch--emerald set in crystals, for their branches are heavily laden with frost. The avenue looks like a corner of the famous Tokaido highway, the Japanese main artery for centuries, where the whole country wandered--rich and poor, mighty and humble, from Kioto to Tokio, from the Mikado's to the Shogun's Court, the Daimios with their retinues in gold and silver; where, too, all the warriors rode in their rich armour, and all the troops marched to war, or home to rest; where all the pilgrims walked to the famous shrines of Nara and Nikko. This avenue, leading to the palace, affords compensation for all the inartistic streets outside the walls. I am even glad that it is covered with snow, and that its sole inhabitants are a few gardeners shovelling the ice aside. The dark trees and the white snow, and these few men clad in straw capes looking very much like the back of a porcupine, and wearing hats like flat tea-trays, are so original and so typical. At last I have a real Japanese picture before me, and not one of those we get at home highly coloured and made partly for the cheap Western markets, but a picture full of harmony in an artistic setting, like one of those famous Kakomenos in black and white by the most celebrated disciples of the great Kano school. A sharp turn brings us to an open space, and the palace is in front of us. I am afraid "palace" is not the right expression, as it looks from the outside like a large Indian bungalow. It is only one storey high, mainly constructed of wood and beams, scarcely ornamental, and covered with a sloping roof of indifferent tiles. There is nothing striking about it, nothing that would attract attention, nothing that is at all imposing; it looks comfortable and nothing more.