I visited a school, half of which was in a building adjoining a temple
and half in the temple itself. In the same county there were two other
schools housed in temples. The small Shinto shrine in this temple held
the Imperial Rescript on education. On one side of it was an ugly
American clock and on the other a thermometer. In the temple (Zen) two
Tokyo University students were staying in ideal conditions for
vacation study.

I saw at one place a very tired, unslept-looking peasant with a small
closed tub carried over his shoulder by means of a pole. On the tub
was tied a white streamer, such as is supplied at a Shinto shrine, and
a branch of _sakaki_ (_Eurya ochnacea_, the sacred tree). The
traveller was the delegate of his village. He had been to a mountain
shrine in the next prefecture and the tub held the water he had got
there. The idea is that if he succeeds in making the journey home
without stopping anywhere his efforts will result in rain coming down
at his village. If he should stop at any place to rest or sleep, and
there should be the slightest drip from his tub there, then the rain
will be procured not for his own village but for the community in
which he has tarried. So our voyager had walked not only for a whole
day but through the night. I heard of a rain delegate who had stamina
enough to keep walking for three or four days without sleeping.

Another way of obtaining rain has principally to do with tugging at a
rock with a straw rope. Then there is the plan already referred to of
tying straw ropes to a stone image and flinging it into the river,
saying, "If you don't give us rain you will stay there; if you do give
us rain you shall come out." There is also the method of paying
someone liberally to throw the split open head of an ox into the deep
pool of a waterfall. "Then the water god being much angry," said my