though it was rather posturing than dancing, great use being made of the fan and the long trailing skirts.  The girls, who were pretty, wore peculiar dresses to indicate their calling, and seemed of an entirely different stamp from the quiet, simply dressed waitresses whom we found so attentive to our wants.  Still they all looked cheery, light-hearted, simple creatures, and appeared to enjoy immensely the little childish games they played amongst themselves between whiles.

After dinner we had some real Japanese tea, tasting exactly like a little hot water poured on very fragrant new-mown hay.  Then, after a brief visit to the kitchen, which, though small, was beautifully clean, we received our boots, and were bowed out by our pleasant hostess and her attentive handmaidens.

On our return we had considerable difficulty in procuring a boat, our own boats being all ashore under repair.  It was a beautiful moonlight night, but bitterly cold.  The harbour being so full of shipping, our boatmen were at first puzzled how to find the yacht, till we pointed to the lights in the deck-house—­always a good beacon at night in a crowded harbour.

Wednesday, January 31st.  We left the yacht soon after eight o’clock, and started by the 9.34 a.m. train for the city formerly called Yeddo, but latterly, since the Mikado has resided there, Tokio, or eastern capital of Japan.  The ground was covered with snow, and there were several degrees of frost, but the sun felt hot, and all the people were sunning themselves in the doorways or wide verandahs of their houses.

Yokohama has been so completely Europeanised, that it was not until we had left it that we caught our first glimpse of Japanese life; and the whole landscape and the many villages looked very like a set of living fans or tea-trays, though somehow the snow did not seem to harmonise with it.

We crossed several rivers, and reached Tokio in about an hour, when we at once emerged into the midst of a clattering, chattering crowd, amongst whom there did not seem to be a single European.  The reverberation, under the glass roof of the station, of the hundreds of pairs of wooden clogs, pattering along, was something extraordinary.  Giving up our tickets, and following the stream, we found ourselves surrounded by a still more animated scene, outside the station.  We were just deliberating what to do next, when a smart little Japanese, with a mail-bag over his shoulder, stepped forward and said something about Sir Harry Parkes.  He then popped us all into several double and treble-manned jinrikishas, and started off himself ahead at a tremendous pace, shouting and clearing the way for us.

Tokio is a genuinely Japanese town.  Not a single foreigner resides within its limits, with the exception of the foreign Ministers.  There is no hotel nor any place of the kind to stay at; so that, unless you have friends at any of the Legations, you must return to Yokohama the same day, which makes a visit rather a fatiguing affair.[16]