In these latter days, however, things have materially changed. Men to-day would be put to the blush by the hale old survivors of those pedestrian times, for they have gone to the other extreme. The conveniences of the jinrikisha, or two-wheeled vehicles drawn by men, and latterly of electric tramways have sapped all energy out of them, and we hear little nowadays of walking feats. There were in 1900 forty-six thousand jinrikisha in Tokyo; but the electric cars, which began to run a few years later, are driving them out of the city, for they are now less than one-half of that number. Still, the pedestrian has need to keep a good lookout on the road, for where, in the absence of footways, men, women, children, vehicles, and horses move about in an inextricable jumble, it is a matter for wonder that accidents are not more frequent. Besides the jinrikisha and electric cars, there are thousands of handcarts, some drawn by coolies and carrying objects of every description from household articles to stones for road-making and trees for gardens, and others drawn by milkmen with their milk-cans, by apprentices with their masters’ wares, by pedlars with various assortments to attract the housewife’s eye, or by farm-boys with vegetables fresh from the field. There are but a thousand waggons drawn by horses or oxen in Tokyo; but as there are twice as many more in the surrounding country, they are very much in evidence in the city since they make their presence unpleasantly obtrusive in narrow streets. These waggons, however, move slowly and give one time to get out of their way. In this respect they are better to meet than the carriages which drive on indifferent to the width of the road; in narrow streets the latter are preceded by grooms who hustle all loiterers out of the way. They are only less eagerly shunned than the motor-cars and the files of handcarts which move leisurely along with pink flags marked “ammunition” from the Imperial arsenal.