It was at an inn at the hot spring near the Mount Nasu volcano--the odour of the sulphurous hot water was everywhere in the district--that I first enjoyed the attentions of the blind _amma_ (_masseur_ or _masseuse_), the call of whose plaintive pipe is heard every evening in the smallest community. _Amma san_ rubbed and pommelled me for an hour for 28 sen. The _amma_ does not massage the skin, but works through the _yukata_ (bath gown) of the patient. I had my massaging as I knelt with the other guests of the inn at an entertainment arranged for the benefit of residents. The entertainers, professional and non-professional--the non-professionals were local farmers--knelt on a low platform or danced in front of it. They were extraordinarily able. A dramatic tale by one of the story-tellers was about a yokelish young wrestler and a daimyo. Another described the woes and suicide of an old-time Court lady. The next day we started on foot on a seven miles' climb of the volcano. Its lower slopes were covered with a variety of that knee-high bamboo with a creeping root, which is so troublesome to farmers when they break up new ground. One variety is said to blossom and fruit once in sixty years and then die. An ingenious professor has traced mice plagues to this habit. In the year in which the bamboo fruits the mice increase and multiply exceedingly. Suddenly their food supply gives out and they descend to the plains to live with the farmers. At length we came in sight of the smoke and vapour of the volcano. Soon we were near the top, where the white trunks and branches of dead trees and scrub, killed by falling ash or gusts of vapour, dotted an awesome desolation of calcined and fused stone and solidified mud. At the summit we looked down into the churning horror of the volcano's vat and at different spots saw the treacly sulphur pouring out, brilliant yellow with red streaks. The man to whom there first came the idea of hell and a prisoned revengeful power must surely have looked into a crater. In the throat of this crater there seethed and spluttered an ugliness that was scarlet, green, brown and yellow. The sound of the steam blowing off was like the roar of the sea. The air was stifling. It was very hot, and there was a high eerie wind. Adventurous men had built rude bulwarks of stone over some of the orifices, and in this way had compelled the volcano to furnish them with sulphur free from dirt. The production of sulphur in Japan is valued at close on three million yen.