We are then supposed to be always clean when we get into the bath; and as we do not wash in the bath itself, its water should always remain clear. But as a matter of fact, the water grows turbid as the day wears; happily, the lights are dim when the bath-house closes an hour or so before midnight. In the daytime it is pretty clean; and bathing in the forenoon is very pleasant as only a few bathers have been before us, except in the lower town where it is the custom for workmen to take an early morning bath. When we have had a bath, we sit down to supper. The master perhaps drinks _sake_ with it, in which case it will take some time as we always finish drinking before we attack the rice. Women seldom drink. The children sup at the same time. After playing for a while, the youngest are put to bed. The mother gets into the bed without undressing with the infant and gives it milk until it falls asleep, whereupon she gets out. Other young children are put to sleep by other members of the family. Their elder brothers and sisters prepare the next day’s lessons and go to bed about nine o’clock. When the children are thus put to bed, the mother is free for the rest of the evening. But it often happens that she is herself sent dozing while she is trying to make the infant sleep. As we keep on the whole early hours, the streets are almost deserted at ten or eleven o’clock except on special nights, and most shops are closed by that time. Only in tea-houses are noises to be heard until twelve o’clock when all musical instruments must be put away. In midsummer, however, houses are often kept open till midnight on account of the heat, especially in the lower town where the crowded buildings get very little of a breeze. CHAPTER XII. SERVANTS. The servant question—Holidays—Hours of rest—Incessant work—Servants trusted—Relations with their mistresses—Decrease of mutual confidence—Life in the kitchen—Servants’ character—Whence they are recruited—Register-offices—The cook—The housemaid—The lady’s maid—Other female servants—The jinrikisha-man—The student house-boy. The servant question is as great a domestic problem with us as it is in other parts of the world. We too complain of our servants’ insubordination, idleness, wilfulness, talkativeness, and general contrariness. Old folk are constantly drumming into our ears that servants are not what they used to be in the good old days and that they have ceased to have their masters’ interests at heart and are ready to leave their present situation whenever better terms are elsewhere obtainable. That the character of servants has deteriorated admits of no doubt; but the fault lies as much with their masters and mistresses as with themselves. However, such as they are, they still retain many good qualities; and on the whole we are better off in this respect than our fellow-sufferers in the West.