The porch of a little tea-house where we rested was covered with grapes. Soon after leaving it we reached our destination for the night, a small town of houses of several storeys which clustered on a hillside under the shadow of a Zen temple. Meat and eggs were forbidden to the town, but as the residents were all Zen Buddhists the restriction was no hardship. There was no cow in the place, but condensed milk was allowed. A man at the inn told me that he knew of ten Shinto shrines which forbade the use of chickens and eggs in their localities. The view from the temple, perched high on its rock above the wide riverway, was exceptionally fine. Parties of boys and girls of thirteen paid visits to this temple "because thirteen is known as a perilous age." The people of the vegetarian town, instead of feeding on the fish in the river, fed them. I saw a shoal of fish being given scraps at the water edge. As we went on our way and spoke of the bad roads it was suggested that in the old days roads were purposely left uphill and downhill in order that the advance of enemies might be hindered. We came to a dilapidated tea-house kept by an ugly old woman who showed a touching fondness for a cat and a dog. From her shack we had a view of a volcano which had destroyed two villages a few years before. Our hostess, who made much of us, said that the catastrophe had been preceded by "horrible da-da-da-bang" sounds and lightnings, and that it was accompanied by "thunderbolts and heavy thick smoke." The old woman had beheld "soil boiling and cracking." Along our route we had more evidences of "fire farming." The procedure was to sow buckwheat the first year and rape and millet the second year. In the cryptomeria forests there was a variety which, when cut, sprouts from the ground and makes a new growth like an elm. One crop we saw was ginseng, protected by low structures covered by matting. At length we heard the distant sound of a locomotive whistle. We were approaching the newly opened railway which was to take us the short run to the sea. Soon we were in a rather unkempt village which had hardly recovered from its surprise at finding that it had a railway station. We paid our _kurumaya_ the sum contracted for and something over for their faithful service and for their long return run, and having exchanged bows and cordial greetings, we left for a time the glorified perambulators which a foreign missionary is supposed to have introduced half a century ago. (The Japanese claim the honour of "inventing" the jinrikisha.) FOOTNOTES: [123] See Appendix XXXVII. [124] See Appendix XXXVIII. [125] In Tokyo one may sleep night after night in summer with no covering but the thinnest loose cotton kimono and have an electric fan going within the mosquito curtain, and still feel the heat. [126] The kimono has no button, hook, tie, or fastening of any kind, and is kept in place by the waist string and _obi_.