We marched the whole company to the police station, where they were identified, their documents examined and passports issued permitting them to leave Japan with us. We had, however, during this time at Sapporo, made one side trip. Piratori and the other Saru towns were so far from the railroad that it had seemed best not to bring an Ainu house from there. So we again took the railroad, passed Tomakomai and Numanohita, and got off the train at Shiraoi, a railroad town of considerable size. The part of the town along the track is Japanese. The Ainu portion, forming perhaps two-thirds of the whole town, lies between the Japanese quarter and the sea. Old Parapita had already been sent to find a house and, promptly on our arrival, the village chief Shupanram took us to the one selected. It was small, but typical; the shem, however, was less than of normal size, so we bought a second very small house to supply material for a _shem_ of normal proportions in Saint Louis. The two houses together cost forty yen (twenty dollars, U. S. currency) and we ordered twenty yen’s worth more of thatching. The chief summoned laborers, men, women and children, the people who had been living in our house, moved out at once, and the work of demolition began. We then took a walk through the town. In some respects it is unlike the Saru River villages and is, perhaps, typical of seaside towns within reach of Japanese influence. The houses are massed quite closely together; many—most of them—are protected or sheltered by breaks or guards of bamboo, built especially at the west doorway; there was an almost complete absence of storehouses—such a conspicuous feature in the Saru villages. But there seems to be the same care in location with regard to the east and west, the same relative position of _nusa_, east window, sacred corner, and _shem_. The Ainu here are fine types. Tall, well-built men are common, one might say, the rule. The average difference of stature between males of Shiraoi and the Saru towns is certainly considerable. Mr. Batchelor tells me that the people of the northern towns near the western coast, as Ishikari, are shorter than those at Piratori. While the stature at Shiraoi is great, the heavy growth of body hair and the great beards are as at Piratori. Notwithstanding Japanese neighbors and the railroad the people at Shiraoi are conservative, and dress, ornament, utensils, and customs might be studied here as well as in some more remote villages. The life is undoubtedly influenced by the location of the village at the seashore, but we had no opportunity to study what peculiarities might be due to that. _Nusas_ are fine and numerous, and there are bear skulls on many of them. Here we noticed more conspicuously than elsewhere a secondary _nusa_, or rather a little group of _inao_ stuck into a hillock made of the refuse from the millet-mortar. More than ever, too, were we impressed with the coyote-like appearance of the dogs, which were here numerous.