Down a very steep declivity, by sharp zigzags, the Tokaido suddenly dips into the little valley of the Yasose-gawa.  At the foot of the hill is a curious shrine cave, containing several rude idols, a trough with tame goldfish, and one of the crudest Buddhas I ever saw.  The aim of the ambitious sculptor of Buddhas is to produce a personification of “great tranquillity.”  The figure in the Valley of Yasose-gawa is certainly something of a masterpiece in this direction; nothing could well be more tranquil than an oblong bowlder with the faintest chiselling of a mouth and nose, poised on the top of an upright slab of stone rudely chipped into a dim semblance of the human form.

A mile or two farther and my day’s ride of forty-six miles terminates at the village of Saka-no-shita.  A comfortable yadoya awaits me here, no better nor worse, however, than almost every Jap village affords; but on the Tokaido the innkeepers are more accustomed to European guests than they are south of Kobe.  Every summer many European and American tourists journey between Yokohama and Kobe by jinrikisha.

At this yadoya I first become acquainted with that peculiar institution of Japan, the blind shampooer.  Seated in my little room, my attention is attracted by a man who approaches on hands and knees, and butts his shaven pate accidentally against the corner of the open panel that forms my door.  He halts at the entrance and indulges in the pantomime of pinching and kneading his person; his mission is to find out whether I desire his services.  For a small gratuity the blind shampooer of Japan will rub, knead, and press one into a pleasant sensation from head to foot.  This office is relegated to sightless individuals or ugly old women; many Japs indulge in their services after a warm bath, finding the treatment very pleasant and beneficial, so they say.

One of the most amusing illustrations of Jap imitativeness is displayed in the number of American clocks one sees adorning the walls of the yadoyas in nearly every village.  The amusing feature of the thing is that the owners of these time-pieces seem to have the vaguest ideas of what they are for.  One clock on the wall of my yadoya indicates eleven o’clock, another half-past nine, and a third seven-fifteen as I pull out in the morning.  Other clocks through the village street vary in similar degree.  Watching out for these widely varying clocks as I wheel through the villages has come to be one of the diversions of the day’s ride.

The road averages good, although somewhat hilly in places, from Saka-no through lovely valleys and pine-clad mountains to Yokka-ichi.  Yokka-ichi is a small seaport, whence most travellers along the Tokaido take passage to Miya in the steam passenger launches plying between these points.  The kuruma road, however, continues good to the Ku-wana, ten miles farther, whence, to Miya, one has to traverse narrower paths through a flat section of rice-fields, dikes, canals, and sloughs.