Though many private houses in the business quarters have no gates, those of any pretensions in the residential districts where land is naturally cheaper, are mostly provided with them. It is not usual for professionals in humbler walks of life and for artisans to live within a gate; but officials and others of some social standing prefer to have one to their houses. Sometimes there is a single gate to a large compound with a number of small houses in it; in such a case the gate-post is studded with name-plates. Gates, too, vary in size and form. The most modest are no more than low wicker-gates which can be jumped over and offer no bar to intrusion. Others are of the same make, but stand higher so that the interior can be seen only through cracks. But the most common consist of two square posts with hinged doors which meet in the middle and are kept shut by a cross-bar passing through clamps on them. These gates may be of the cheapest kind of wood, such as cryptomeria, or may be massive and of hard wood. Another common kind has a roof over it with a single door which is hinged on one post and fastened on to the other and provided with a small sliding-door for daily use. The larger pair gates have also small side-doors for use at night when they are themselves shut. [Illustration: A HOUSE AND A GATE.] After entering by the gate, we come to the porch; the distance between them varies with the size and exposure of the house. It is not true, as has been said by some writers on Japan, that in our houses the parlour and the garden invariably occupy the rear while the kitchen is in front. Their position depends upon the exposure of the house. No people short of savages probably lead a more open-air life than we do in our wooden houses. Our paper sliding-doors, which are our only protection against wind and cold in winter, admit both light and air; and we provide personally against the cold by wearing wadded clothing and huddling over braziers, while in summer all the sliding-doors are often removed to let the cool breeze blow through the house. It becomes, then, an important matter in building or selecting a house to see that its principal rooms are so arranged as to get the warm rays of the sun in winter and the cool breezes in summer. As both these are to be obtained from the south, the principal rooms are made to expose their open side to that direction. In winter the exposure of these rooms makes a vast difference in the consumption of charcoal as the sun shining through the open side warms the rooms more thoroughly than the braziers can do. Next to the south, the east is the favourite direction, as the east wind coming over the Pacific Ocean is milder than the north or west. The west wind, crossing as it does the snowy ridges of Central Japan, is cold in winter while the piercing rays of the westering sun make the rooms intolerably hot in summer; and the north wind is cold in winter and in summer breezes seldom come from that direction.