Jack will soon find out that the Japanese _cuisine_ is most varied. Tea and sacki, or rice beer, are the only liquors used, except, of course, by travelled, Europeanised, or Americanised Japanese. They sit on the floor, squatting on their heels in a manner which tires Europeans very rapidly, although they look as comfortable as possible. The floor serves them for chair, table, bed, and writing-desk. At meals there is a small stand, about nine inches high, by seven inches square, placed before each individual, and on this is deposited a small bowl, and a variety of little dishes. Chopsticks are used to convey the food to their mouths. Their most common dishes are fish boiled with onions, and a kind of small bean, dressed with oil; fowls stewed and cooked in all ways; boiled rice. Oil, mushrooms, carrots, and various bulbous roots, are greatly used in making up their dishes. In the way of a bed in summer, they merely lie down on the mats, and put a _wooden_ pillow under their heads; but in winter indulge in warm quilts, and have brass pans of charcoal at the feet. They are very cleanly, baths being used constantly, and the public bath-houses being open to the street. Strangely enough, however, although so particular in bodily cleanliness, they never wash their clothes, but wear them till they almost drop to pieces. A gentleman who arrived there in 1859, had to send his clothes to Shanghai to be washed—a journey of 1,600 miles! Since the great influx of foreigners, however, plenty of Niphons have turned laundrymen. Their tea-gardens, like those of the Chinese, are often large and extremely ornamental, and at them one obtains a cup of genuine tea made before your eyes for one-third of a halfpenny.(95) [Illustration: THE FUSIYAMA MOUNTAIN.] The great attraction, in a landscape point of view, outside Yokohama, is the grand Fusiyama Mountain, an extinct volcano, the great object of reverence and pride in the Japanese heart, and which in native drawings and carvings is incessantly represented. A giant, 14,000 feet high, it towers grandly to the clouds, snow-capped and streaked. It is deemed a holy and worthy deed to climb to its summit, and to pray in the numerous temples that adorn its sides. Thousands of pilgrims visit it annually. And now let us make a northward voyage. [Illustration: A TEA MART IN JAPAN.] CHAPTER IX. ROUND THE WORLD ON A MAN-OF-WAR (_continued_). NORTHWARD AND SOUTHWARD—THE AUSTRALIAN STATION.