Boots and shoes _versus_ clogs and sandals—Inconvenience of foreign footgear—Shoes and boots at private houses—Clogs and sandals able to hold their own—How clogs are made—Plain clogs—Matted clogs—Sandals—Straw sandals—Headgear—Woman’s hood—Overcoats and overdresses—Common umbrellas—Better descriptions of umbrellas—Lanterns—Better kinds of lanterns. European clothes are, as we have seen, replacing the Japanese male dress in schools, public offices, and other quarters, and are checked in their advance only by the unaltered state of Japanese homes. In the matter of footgear the case is almost similar, only that boots and shoes have superseded clogs and sandals to a far greater extent than coats and trousers have the _kimono_. For people in foreign clothes almost invariably wear foreign footgear; it is only in wet weather that one sees sometimes a Japanese in European clothes walking through the mud in clogs instead of boots; and a great many in native clothes wear boots and shoes. There are plenty of people who go in _hakama_ to schools and public and private offices; but where these buildings are in foreign style as most of them are, people are not allowed to enter with their clogs, and the only alternative is that they must wear sandals or boots. But as the sandals cover the feet with dust in dry weather and with mud in wet, many persons prefer to walk in clogs and change them for sandals at the school or office; but as this means that they must leave at the entrance their sandals at night and their clogs in the daytime, they run the risk of losing them. Hence, there is a steady increase in the number of those who wear boots or shoes, which if one gets used to them, are easier to walk in than clogs or sandals. Boots and shoes go very well with the _hakama_, which, being loose and wide, does not rub against them; but they are not so convenient when we are in _kimono_ only. The leather, by rubbing against the _kimono_, wears it, especially if silk-lined, much more quickly than do clogs; for in a Japanese dress it is not the thongs of the clogs so much as the socks that rub against the lining of the _kimono_. And these socks naturally wear it out more slowly if they are of calico, and not of cotton.