The English Embassy is a nice red brick house, built in the centre of a garden, so as to be as secure as possible from fire or attack.  After a most pleasant luncheon we looked over the nucleus of a second collection which Lady Parkes is beginning to form.  Her former beautiful collection was burnt a few years ago, a most disheartening misfortune, especially as the opportunities for obtaining really old and good things in Japan are diminishing day by day.

A little later we started in great force, some in carriages and some on horseback, attended by running grooms, to see something more of the city.  These men think nothing of running by the side of a horse and carriage some forty miles a day.  They form a distinct class, and when working on their own account wear little clothing.  When in the service of private individuals they are dressed in tight-fitting dark-blue garments, with short capes, fastened to their arms, and large hats.

Just outside the Embassy we passed two of the finest of the still existing yashgis, the larger one being used as the Home Office, the other as the Foreign Office.

There is always a festival going on in some part of Tokio.  To-day there had been a great wrestling-match, and we met all the people coming away.  Such crowds of jinrikiskas, full of gaily dressed and painted women and children, with their hair plastered into all sorts of inconceivable shapes, and decorated with artificial flowers and glittering pins!  We met six of the wrestlers themselves, riding in jinrikishas—­big men, prodigiously fat, and not at all, according to our ideas, in fighting or wrestling condition.  One of their jinrikisha men stumbled and fell, just as they passed us, and the wrestler shot out, head over heels, and lay, a helpless ball of fat, in the middle of the road, till somebody came and picked him up.  He was not in the least hurt, and, as soon as he was set on his feet again, began to belabour the poor jinrikisha man most unmercifully.  After a long and delightful drive we arrived at the station just in time to catch the train.

The return journey to Yokohama, in the omnibus-like railway carriages, was very cold, and the jinrikisha drive to the Grand Hotel colder still; but a roaring fire and a capital dinner soon warmed and comforted us.

After dinner we looked over a fine collection of photographs of Japanese scenery and costumes, and then returned to the yacht in the house-boat belonging to the hotel, which was prettily decorated with bright-coloured lanterns, and which afforded welcome shelter from the biting wind.