rank, from the Prince who is the heir of the last of the Shoguns down
to democratic Barons who prefer to be called "Mr.", I chatted with
farmers' wives and daughters, I interrogated landladies and mill
girls, and I paid a memorable visit to a Buddhist nunnery. I walked,
talked, rode, ate and bathed with common folk and with dignitaries. I
discussed the situation of Japan with the new countryman in college
agricultural laboratories and classrooms, and, in a remote region,
beheld what is rare nowadays, the old countryman kneeling before his
cottage with his head to the ground as the stranger rode past.

I made notes as I traversed paddy-field paths, by mountain ways, in
colleges, schools, houses and inns. It can only have been when
crossing water on men's backs that I did not make notes. I jotted
things down as I walked, as I sat, as I knelt, as I lay on my _futon_,
as I journeyed in _kuruma_, on horseback, in jolting _basha_, in
automobiles, in shaking cross-country trains and in boats; in
brilliant sunshine and sweltering heat, in the shade and in dust; in
the early morning with chilled fingers or more or less furtively as I
crouched at protracted private or official repasts, or late at night
endeavoured to gather crumbs from the wearing conversation of polite
callers who, though set on helping me, did not always find it easy to
understand the kind of information of which I was in search. One of
these asked my travelling companion _sotto voce_, "Is he after metal
mines?"

I went on my own trips and on routes planned out for me by
agricultural and social zealots, and from time to time I returned
physically and mentally fatigued to my little Japanese house near
Tokyo to rest and to write out from my memoranda, to seek data for new
districts from the obliging Department of Agriculture and the