We first made a four hours’ railway run through the great Kwanto plain (6,000 square miles).  Travelling is comfortable on such a trip, for travellers take off their coats and waistcoats, and the train-boy—­he has the word “Boy” on his collar in English—­brings fans and bedroom slippers.  The fans, which on one side advertised “Hotels in European style, directly managed by the Imperial Government Railway[114],” offered on the other a poem and a drawing.  A poem addressed to a snail played with the idea of its giving its life to climbing Fuji.  The poem was composed by a poet who wrote many delightful hokku (seventeen-syllable poems), showing a humorous sympathy with the humblest creatures.  One poem is: 

        Come and play with me,
        Thou orphan sparrow!

Like Burns, Issa addressed a poem to a louse.

As we climbed from the vicinity of the sea to higher lands someone recalled the saying about saints living in the mountains and sages by the sea.  Speaking of religion, one man said that he had known of people giving half their income to religious purposes.  He also mentioned that for some years his mother had gone to hear a sermon in a Japanese Christian church every Sunday, but she still served her Buddhist shrine.

It was at an inn at the hot spring near the Mount Nasu volcano—­the odour of the sulphurous hot water was everywhere in the district—­that I first enjoyed the attentions of the blind amma (masseur or masseuse), the call of whose plaintive pipe is heard every evening in the smallest community. Amma san rubbed and pommelled me for an hour for 28 sen.  The amma does not massage the skin, but works through the yukata (bath gown) of the patient.  I had my massaging as I knelt with the other guests of the inn at an entertainment arranged for the benefit of residents.  The entertainers, professional and non-professional—­the non-professionals were local farmers—­knelt on a low platform or danced in front of it.  They were extraordinarily able.  A dramatic tale by one of the story-tellers was about a yokelish young wrestler and a daimyo.  Another described the woes and suicide of an old-time Court lady.

The next day we started on foot on a seven miles’ climb of the volcano.  Its lower slopes were covered with a variety of that knee-high bamboo with a creeping root, which is so troublesome to farmers when they break up new ground.  One variety is said to blossom and fruit once in sixty years and then die.  An ingenious professor has traced mice plagues to this habit.  In the year in which the bamboo fruits the mice increase and multiply exceedingly.  Suddenly their food supply gives out and they descend to the plains to live with the farmers.