Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Foundations of Japan - Notes Made During Journeys Of 6,000 Miles In The Rural Districts As - A Basis For A Sounder Knowledge Of The Japanese People by J.W. Robertson Scott
page 185 of 766 (24%)
guests are mostly country folk. Many of them carefully bring their own
rice and _miso_, and are put up at a cost of about 10 sen a day. In
the passage ways one finds rough boxes about 4 ft. square full of wood
ash in the centre of which charcoal may be burned and kettles boiled.

We were in a region where there is snow from the middle of November to
the middle of April. For two-thirds of December and January the snow
is never less than 2 ft. deep. The attendance of the children at one
school during the winter was 95 per cent. for boys and 90 per cent.
for girls. (See note, p. 112.)

My _kurumaya_ pointed to a mountain top where, he said, there were
nearly three acres of beautiful flowers. The rice fields in the hills
were suffering from lack of water and a deputation of villagers had
gone ten miles into the mountains to pray for rain. It is wonderful at
what altitudes rice fields are contrived. I noted some at 2,500 ft. In
looking down from a place where the cliff road hung out over the river
that flowed a hundred feet below I noticed a stone image lying on its
back in the water. It may have come there by accident, but the ducking
of such a figure in order to procure rain is not unknown.

At an inn I asked one of the greybeards who courteously visited us if
there would be much competition for his seat when he retired from the
village assembly. He thought that there would be several candidates.
In the town from which we had set out on our journey through the
highlands a doctor had spent 500 yen in trying to get on the assembly.

The tea at this resting place was poor and someone quoted the proverb,
"Even the devil was once eighteen and bad tea has its tolerable first
cup." On going to the village office I found that for a population of
DigitalOcean Referral Badge