The servants soon produced a luncheon, excellently well cooked; and’ directly we had finished it we sallied forth again to see what we could before dark.  First we went to the temple of Gion, a fine building, standing in extensive grounds, and surrounded by smaller temples and houses for the priests.  The Dutch envoys used to stay here when they were brought through the country, like prisoners, to pay their annual tribute for being allowed to trade with Japan.  They were subjected to all kinds of indignities, and used to be made to dance and sing, pretend to be drunk, and play all sorts of pranks, for the amusement of the whole court as well as for the Mikado and the empress, hidden behind a grating.

From Gion we went to see other temples, and wandered about under the large conifers of all kinds, trying to find out the quarters of the British Legation for some time, until Sir Harry Parkes returned.  The rooms at his residence were comfortable, but cold-looking, for mats and paper screens do not look nice in a frost.  There were tables and chairs and paraffin lamps, but no bedsteads, only about a dozen cotton and silk quilts, some of which were supposed to serve as a couch, while others were to be used as coverings.

Sir Harry has had, I fear, a great deal of trouble about the yacht.  She is the first vessel of the kind ever seen in Japan, with the exception of the one sent out in 1858 as a present from the Queen to the then Tycoon, and now used by the Mikado.  The officials, it seems, cannot make the ‘Sunbeam’ out.  ’Is she a man-of-war?  We know what that is.’  ‘No.’  ‘Is she a merchant ship?’ ‘No; she is a yacht.’  But what can be the object of a vessel without guns is quite beyond their comprehension.  At last it has been settled that, in order to be like other nations, the Japanese officials will not force us to enter at the Custom House, or to pay a fine of sixty dollars a day for not doing so.  As a matter of precedent, it was important that the point should be settled, though I hardly imagine that many yachts will follow our example, and come out to Japan through the Straits of Magellan and across the Pacific.

As it was now growing late, we returned to the hotel for dinner.  The night was cold, and hibatchis and lamps alike failed to warm the thinly walled and paper-screened room.

Sir Harry Parkes came and spent the evening with us, and taught us more about Japan in two or three hours than we could have learned by much study of many books.  The fact is, that in this fast-changing country guide-books get out of date in two or three years.  Besides which, Sir Harry has been one of the chief actors in many of the most prominent events we have recently been reading about.  To hear him describe graphically the wars of 1868, and the Christian persecutions in 1870, with the causes that led to the revolution, and the effect it has had on the country, was indeed interesting.  Still more so was his account of his journey hither to force the newly emerged Mikado and his Ministers to sign the treaty, which had already received the assent (of course valueless) of the deposed Tycoon.