[259] There is one blameless form of stock keeping which is developing in Hokkaido. Bees, which have still to make their way in Old Japan, are now 6,000 hives strong in the northern island, though a start was made only six or seven years ago. [260] It is illustrative of the extent to which pickle is consumed in Japan that a family in Sapporo was found to have eaten no fewer than 283 _daikon_ in a year. [261] The reader must put away the impression which this table gives of a varied dietary. Few Japanese have such a range of food. The average man habitually lives on rice, bean products (_tofu_, bean jelly and _miso_, soft bean cheese), pickles, vegetables, tea, a little fish and sometimes eggs. People of narrow means see little of eggs and not much fish, unless it be _katsubushi_. [262] The watering of vegetables with liquid manure, the usual practice of the Japanese farmer, and the pollution of the paddies make salads and insufficiently cooked green stuff dangerous and many water supplies of questionable purity. Great efforts have been made to provide safe tap water from the hills. Intestinal parasites are common. The build of the Japanese makes for strength, but in the urban areas there is much absence from work on the plea of ill-health. Both in Japan and in England I have been struck by the fact that when I made an excursion with an urban Japanese he often tired before I did, and on none of these trips was I in anything like first-class condition. [263] Many Japanese look forward to a great production of wheat on the north-eastern Asiatic mainland under Japanese auspices. In considering imports of wheat it should be remembered that some of it is used in soy and macaroni. CHAPTER XXXIX MUST THE JAPANESE MAKE THEIR OWN "YOFUKU"?[264] "God damn all foreigners!"_--Interrupter at one of Mr. Gladstone's early meetings at Oxford_