There was stuck on the roofs of many houses a rod with a piece of white paper attached, a charm against fire. One house so provided was next door to the fire station. Frequently we passed a children's _jizō_ or Buddha, comically decked in the hat and miscellaneous garments of youngsters whose grateful mothers believed them to have been cured by the power of the deity. Speaking of clothes, it was the hottest July weather and the natural garment was at most a loin cloth. The women wore a piece of red or coloured cotton from their waist to their knees. The backs of the men and women who were working in the open were protected by a flapping ricestraw mat or by an armful of green stuff. The boys under ten or so were naked and so were many little girls. But the influence of the Westernising period ideas of what was "decent" in the presence of foreigners survives. So, whenever a policeman was near, people of all ages were to be seen huddling on their kimonos. I was sorry for a merry group of boys and girls aged 12 or 13 who in that torrid weather[125] were bathing at an ideal spot in the river and suddenly caught sight of a policeman. It is deplorable that a consciousness of nakedness should be cultivated when nakedness is natural, traditional and hygienic. (Even in the schools the girls are taught to make their kimonos meet at the neck--with a pin![126]--much higher than they used to be worn.) It is only fair to bear in mind, however, that some hurrying on of clothes by villagers is done out of respect to the passing superior, before whom it is impolite to appear without permission half dressed or wearing other than the usual clothing. At a hot spring we found many patrons because, as I was told, "Ox-day is very suitable for bathing." The old pre-Meiji days of the week were twelve: Rat-, Ox-, Tiger-, Hare-, Dragon-, Snake-, Horse-, Sheep-, Monkey-, Fowl-, Dog-and Boar-day. When the Western seven days of the week were adopted they were rendered into Japanese as: Sun, Moon, Fire, Water, Wood, Metal and Earth, followed by the word meaning star or planet and day. For instance, Sunday is _Nichi_ (Sun) _yo_ (star) _bi_ (day), and Monday, _Getsu_ (Moon) _yo_ (planet) _bi_ (day), or _Nichi-yo-bi_ and _Getsu-yo-bi_. For brevity the _bi_ is often dropped off. The headman of a village we passed through told me that the occasion of my coming was the first on which English had been heard in those parts. Talking about the people of his village, he said that there had been four divorces in the year. Once in four or five years a child was born within a few months of marriage. In the whole county there had been among 310 young men examined for the army only four cases of "disgraceful disease." There was no immoral woman in the 75-miles-long valley. Elsewhere in the county many young men were in debt, but in the headman's village no youth was without a savings-bank book. And the local men-folk "did not use women's savings as in some places."