“The rear of the building is appropriated to the family. Here the domestic operations are all carried on; here the family take their meals in the day; here, on the same mats, do they sleep at night; receiving visitors and dressing the children are also done here, and sometimes the cooking too. Usually this latter household task is performed in the porch in the rear, or in an out-house, so that the inmates are not so much annoyed with smoke as they are in Hakodate. No arrangements for warming the dwelling are to be found, except that of hand-braziers placed in the middle of the room with lighted charcoal, around which the family gather. In most of the houses there is a garret, reached by a ladder,—a dark and small apartment, where some goods can be stored, or servants can be lodged. There is not a house in the town whose occupants have arranged this attic with windows and stairways to make it a pleasant room; a few such were, however, seen near the capital, at Kanagawa, and in its vicinity. “The roofs of all the best buildings are hipped, and covered with bluish tiling, each tile being about eight inches square, shaped somewhat like a wedge; the thick side is so made that, when laid on the rafters, it laps sideways over the thin edge of the adjoining tile in the next row, and thus forms gutters somewhat like the Chinese roofs. They are washed in alternate rows of white and blue, which, with the checkered walls, imparts a lively aspect, and contrasts pleasantly with the more numerous dingy thatched roofs. The thatched roofs are made of a species of Arundo, grown and prepared for this purpose, and answering admirably as a cheap and light covering to the wooden tenements occupied by most of the people. It is matted into a compact mass eighteen inches thick, as it is laid on, and then the surface and the sides are neatly sheared. The ridge-pole is protected by laying the thatch over a row of hoops that enclose it enough to overlap the edges on both slopes, and prevent the rain finding entrance. One cannot feel surprise at the ravages fires make in Japanese towns, where the least wind must blow the flame upon such straw coverings, which, like a tinder-box, would ignite at the first spark. Wires are stretched along the ridges of some of the tiled roofs in Shimoda to prevent birds from resting on the houses.