The baby slipped quietly out of the house while her mother was having
her honorable hair dressed. It takes a hair-dresser about two hours to
dress a Japanese lady's honorable hair, but fortunately it has to be
done only once in five or six days because the hair is never mussed at
night.
The women in Japan keep their heads peacefully quiet all night, letting
their necks only rest upon the thin cushion of their wooden pillow. In
this way the soft rolls and puffs of their shining black hair are not
disturbed, and even the big pins do not have to be removed.
Hair-dressers go from house to house as often as they are needed, and
when Baby Yuki saw one come into the room and begin taking down her
mother's hair, she began quietly taking her way along the stepping
stones to the gate. Once outside the gate she trotted along toward the
bridge over the moat.
This moat ran around the old feudal castle where a daimyo used to live,
and Yuki-ko often went as far as the bridge with Umé or Tara when they
started off for school. Sometimes all three of the children went there
to look at the green lotus leaves or the beautiful lotus blossoms which
cover the water in July and August.
But to-day Baby Yuki did not stop on the bridge. She crossed it and
clattered down the street to a far corner where a street-peddler was
selling toys.
Japanese peddlers are always very pleasant people, and this one danced
and sang funny songs which the baby was only too glad to hear.
Up one street and down another the man took his way, stopping wherever
he found a few little children to listen to him; and one or two children
from every group followed along with Yuki San, making a pretty sight.
A foreign lady with a camera stopped her jinrikisha-man, saying, "That
is the very smallest child I ever saw standing on its own two feet and
walking with other children in the street. One of the older girls should
carry the baby on her back."
Baby Yuki stood on the outside of the group, making a pretty picture all
by herself. She was so clean and sweet that the lady determined to
follow her and take several pictures. She dismissed her jinrikisha and
became a child with the others, following where the peddler led.
At last they reached Asakusa street, which leads to Asakusa Temple. This
street is lined with booths on each side, and in each booth there is a
man selling toys, or candies, or paper parasols, or kites, or something
to tempt the rin and sen out of a child's pocket.
Wherever there is a temple in a Japanese city there is also a toy-shop,
and where there is a toy-shop there is, of course, a toy which one must
surely buy. The children love to buy the toys and play with them in the
temple gardens.
In the gardens of Asakusa Temple there are ponds filled with goldfish
and silverfish and carp. These fish are tame and will eat from the
children's fingers because children have fed them for years and years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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