Another feast, which, while not founded for the boys, seems to have been adopted by them as a great occasion, is what is known as Buddha's birthday, celebrated on April eighth. On this day in every Buddhist temple a temporary platform is erected, the roof of which is covered with flowers. Upon this platform, in a great tub filled with licorice tea, is set a small image of the infant Buddha. Hither flock the small boys with bamboo dippers, and spend the day ladling up the tea and pouring it over the image, and then ladling it out into small bamboo buckets. This licorice tea, through contact with the image, acquires miraculous healing properties, and the devout, after making offerings of money twisted up in white paper, carry away the little buckets. The tea is good for the eyes and the throat, and if some of it be used in mixing ink, and then, with the ink thus mixed, a charm be written and placed about the house, it will keep away all vermin. It is not easy to see exactly what the fascination of this feast is to the boys, but I am told that many of them like it even better than their own specially appointed day. But of all the delights that come into the year, there is nothing to compare for joyous excitement with the great _matsuri_ of the parish temple. For at least a week beforehand there are enough interesting things going on in every house and shop along the street to keep every small boy in the parish agog from morning till night. Here are lanterns being made with the _mon_ of the gods on one side and the rising sun of the Japanese flag on the other. There a dancing platform is being erected, and at every stage of its development it is swarming with active youngsters, who shin up its poles, turn somersaults on the platform, and sit in rows on its edge, with bare legs swinging high over the heads of the passers-by; and when it is done, and the drums installed, they take turns all day and far into the night in keeping them going. Then, too, there are the _dashi_, or floats, on one of which each street in the parish spends its money and its ingenuity. How the boys haunt the shops in which they are being made! How they watch the wondrous changes of paper into flowers, and of bamboo and cotton cloth into sea waves, or castle walls, or monsters of earth or sea or air! How they chatter and wriggle and push and squirm for front places, when at last the great cars are built up in the open street, the marvelous edifices erected upon them, and at the top of all the heroic figures of well-known mythological or historical characters rise majestic in flowing robes! Then, when the black bullocks, resplendent in collars and halters of red rope, are yoked to the triumphal car, and the structure moves slowly down the shouting street, how the boys crawl into every joint and cranny of the _dashi_, how they hang from every beam, how they yell from before and behind in sheer abandon of joy! And at last, when