The lower class women of the cities are in many respects like their sisters of the rural districts, except that they have less freedom than the country women in what the economists call "direct production." The wells and water tanks that stand at convenient distances along the streets of Tōkyō are frequently surrounded by crowds of women, drawing water, washing rice, and chattering merrily over their occupations. They meet and exchange ideas freely with each other and with the men, but they have not the diversity of labor that country life affords, confining themselves more closely to indoor and domestic work, and leaving the bread-winning more entirely to the men. There are, however, occupations in the city for women, by which they may support themselves or their families. A good hair-dresser may make a handsome living; indeed, she does so well that it is proverbial among the Japanese that a hair-dresser's husband has nothing to do. Though professional tailors are mostly men, many women earn a small pittance in taking in sewing and in giving sewing lessons; and as instructors in the ceremonial tea, etiquette, music, painting, and flower arrangement, many women of the old school are able to earn an independence, though none of these occupations are confined to the women alone. The business of hotel-keeping we have referred to in a previous chapter, and it is a well-known fact that unless a hotel-keeper has a capable wife, his business will not succeed. At present, all over Tōkyō, small restaurants, where food is served in the foreign style, are springing up, and these are usually conducted by a man and his wife who have at some time served as cook and waitress in a foreign family, and who conduct the business cöoperatively and on terms of good-fellowship and equality. In these little eating-houses, where a well-cooked foreign dinner of from three to six courses is served for the moderate sum of thirty or forty cents, the man usually does the cooking, the woman the serving and handling of the money, until the time arrives when the profits of the business are sufficient to justify the hiring of more help. When this time comes, the labor is redistributed, the woman frequently taking upon herself the reception of the guests and the keeping of the accounts, while the hired help waits on the tables.