were glad of our tinned food and ship's biscuits. This was of course
in a remote part. Apart from ordinary Japanese food, there are usually
available at the inns chicken, fish of some sort, eggs, omelettes and
soups. With a pot of jam or two and some powdered milk in one's bag,
one can live fairly well. Fresh milk can now be got in unlikely places
on giving notice overnight. It is produced for invalids and children.
If one makes no fuss, remembers one is a traveller who has resolved to
see rural Japan, and realises that the inn people will try to do their
best, one will not fare so badly. On the railway one is well catered
for by the provision of _bento_ (lunch) boxes, sold on the platforms
of stations. These chip boxes contain rice (hot), cold omelette, cold
fish or chicken and assorted pickles, and provide an appetising and
inexpensive meal.

Monkeys, bears and antelopes are shot in this district. One man spoke
of a troop of eighty monkeys. In the high mountain regions there are
still people who escape the census and live a wild life. The records
of a gipsy folk called Sanka have a history going back 700 or 800
years.

As we wound our way up and down the hill-sides we saw evidence of
"fire-farming." It is the simple method by which a small tract with a
favourable aspect is cleared by fire and cultivated, and then, when
the fertility is exhausted, abandoned. I was assured that after
fire-farming "tea springs up naturally," and that though tea-drinking
may have been introduced from China there could not be such large
areas of tea growing wild if tea were not indigenous.

Most of our paths lay through woods and matted vegetation. I noticed
that trees were often felled in order that mushrooms might be grown on