When the evenings were pleasant they were spent out-of-doors, and on pleasant moonlight evenings almost the entire population of a town would be on its streets. At other times the evenings would be spent in the home, the entire family being together, including the grandparents and even the servants. Sometimes the father would tell stories of Japanese history and of folk-lore, sometimes they would play chess and checkers, but the greatest time was spent with cards. One such game was known as "The poems of a hundred poets." On one card was written the half of one hundred famous Japanese poems and the other half on another card, half of these cards being distributed among the players and the other half being given to a reader. The reader would call off the half of one poem and the one having the other half would call back and this would continue till all the cards were matched. There was dancing of evenings, usually by the young women, sometimes by the men, but, perhaps, never by men and women together. In some places of moonlight nights the young people would dance all night in the streets or open places near the castle-gates. "Among the ghostly games intended to test the courage of, or perhaps to frighten, children, are two plays called, respectively, 'Hiyaku Monogatari' and 'Kon-daméshi,' or the 'One Hundred Stories' and 'Soul-examination.' In the former play a company of boys and girls assemble round the hibachi, while they, or an adult, an aged person or a servant, usually relate ghost-stories, or tales calculated to straighten the hair and make the blood crawl. In a distant dark room, a lamp (the usual dish of oil), with a wick of one hundred strands or piths, is set. At the conclusion of each story, the children in turn must go to the dark room and remove a strand of the wick. As the lamp burns down low, the room becomes gloomy and dark, and the last boy, it is said, always sees a demon, a huge face, or something terrible. In the 'Kon-daméshi,' or 'Soul-examination,' a number of boys, during the day plant some flags in different parts of a graveyard, under a lonely tree, or by a haunted hillside. At night, they meet together, and tell stories about ghosts, goblins, devils, etc.; and at the conclusion of each tale, when the imagination is wrought up, the hair begins to rise and the marrow to curdle, the boys, one at a time, must go out in the dark and bring back the flags, until all are brought in."[121]