Fish and rice (sakana and meshi) are the most readily obtainable things to eat at a Japanese hotel, and often form the only bill of fare.  Sake, or rice-beer, is usually included in the Jap’s own meal, but the average European traveller at first prefers limiting his beverage to tea.  The sake is served up in big-necked bottles of cheap porcelain holding about a pint.  The bottle is set for a few minutes in boiling water to warm the sake, the Japs preferring to drink it warm.  Sake is more like spirits than beer, an honest alcoholic production from rice that soon recommends itself to the European palate, though rather offensive at first.

Every tea-house along the road is made doubly attractive by prettily dressed attendants-smiling girls who come out and invite passing travellers to rest and buy tea and refreshments.  Their solicitations are chiefly winsome smiles and polite bows and the cheerful greeting “O-ai-o” (the Japanese “how do you do").  A tiny teapot, no larger than those the little girls at home play at “keeping house” with, and shell-like cup to match, is brought on a lacquered tray and placed before one, with charming grace, if a halt is made at one of these tea-houses.  Persimmons, sweets, cakes, and various tid-bits are temptingly arrayed on the sloping stand in front.  The most trifling purchase is rewarded with an exhibition of good-nature and politeness worth many times the money.

About sunset I roll into the smooth, clean streets of Omura, a good-sized town, and seek the accommodation of a charming yadoya (inn) pointed out by a youth in semi-European clothes, who seems bubbling over with pleasure at the opportunity of rendering me this slight assistance.  A room is assigned me upstairs, a mat spread for me to recline on, by a polite damsel, who touches her forehead to the floor both when she makes her appearance and her exit.  Having got me comfortably settled down with the customary service of tea, sweets, little boxed brazier of live charcoal, spittoon, etc., the proprietor, his wife, and daughter, all come up and prostrate themselves after the most approved fashion.

After all the salaaming and deferentiality experienced in other Eastern countries, one still cannot help being impressed with the spectacle of several grotesque Japs bowing before one’s seated figure like Hindoos prostrating themselves before some idol With any other people than the Japs this lowly attitude would seem offensively servile; but these inimitable people leave not the slightest room for thinking their actions obsequious.  The Japs are a wonderful race; they seem to be the happiest people going, always smiling and good-natured, always polite and gentle, always bowing and scraping.

After a bountiful supper of several fishy preparations and rice, the landlord bobs his head to the floor, sucks his breath through the teeth after the peculiar manner of the Japs when desirous of being excessively polite, and extends his hands for my passport.  This the yadoya proprietor is required to take and have examined at the police station, provided no policeman calls for it at the house.