prediction,--after having discovered that I cannot understand the
Japanese at all,--I feel better qualified to attempt this essay.

As first perceived, the outward strangeness of things in Japan
produces (in certain minds, at least) a queer thrill impossible to
describe,--a feeling of weirdness which comes to us only with the
perception of the totally unfamiliar. You find yourself moving
through queer small streets full of odd small people, wearing robes
and sandals of extraordinary shapes; and you can scarcely distinguish
the sexes at sight. The houses are constructed and furnished in ways
alien to all your experience; and you are astonished to find that you
cannot conceive the use or meaning of numberless things on display in
the shops. Food-stuffs of unimaginable derivation; utensils of
enigmatic forms; emblems incomprehensible of some mysterious belief;
strange masks and toys that commemorate legends of gods or demons;
odd figures, too, of the gods themselves, with monstrous ears and
smiling faces,--all these you may perceive as you wander about;
though you must also notice telegraph-poles and type-writers,
electric lamps and sewing machines. Everywhere on signs and hangings,
and on the backs of people passing by, you will observe wonderful
Chinese [7] characters; and the wizardry of all these texts makes the
dominant tone of the spectacle.

Further acquaintance with this fantastic world will in nowise
diminish the sense of strangeness evoked by the first vision of it.
You will soon observe that even the physical actions of the people
are unfamiliar,--that their work is done in ways the opposite of
Western ways. Tools are of surprising shapes, and are handled after
surprising methods: the blacksmith squats at his anvil, wielding a
hammer such as no Western smith could use without long practice; the