It was on this ride from Moji to Nagasaki that we were introduced to the attractive and very satisfactory manner of serving lunches to travelers on the trains in Japan.  At important stations hot tea is brought to the car windows in small glazed, earthenware teapots provided with cover and bail, and accompanied with a teacup of the same ware.  The set and contents could be purchased for five sen, two and a half cents, our currency.  All tea is served without milk or sugar.  The lunches were very substantial and put together in a neat sanitary manner in a three-compartment wooden box, carefully made from clear lumber joined with wooden pegs and perfect joints.  Packed in the cover we found a paper napkin, toothpicks and a pair of chopsticks.  In the second compartment there were thin slices of meat, chicken and fish, together with bamboo sprouts, pickles, cakes and small bits of salted vegetables, while the lower and chief compartment was filled with rice cooked quite stiff and without salt, as is the custom in the three countries.  The box was about six inches long, four inches deep and three and a half inches wide.  These lunches are handed to travelers neatly wrapped in spotless thin white paper daintily tied with a bit of color, all in exchange for 25 sen,—­12.5 cents.  Thus for fifteen cents the traveler is handed, through the car window, in a respectful manner, a square meal which he may eat at his leisure.

XVII

RETURN TO JAPAN

We had returned to Japan in the midst of the first rainy season, and all the day through, June 25th, and two nights, a gentle rain fell at Nagasaki, almost without interruption.  Across the narrow street from Hotel Japan were two of its guest houses, standing near the front of a wall-faced terrace rising twenty-eight feet above the street and facing the beautiful harbor.  They were accessible only by winding stone steps shifting on paved landings to continue the ascent between retaining walls overhung with a wealth of shrubbery clothed in the densest foliage, so green and liquid in the drip of the rain, that one almost felt like walking edgewise amid stairs lest the drip should leave a stain.  Over such another series of steps, but longer and more winding, we found our way to the American Consulate where in the beautifully secluded quarters Consul-General Scidmore escaped many annoyances of settling the imagined petty grievances arising between American tourists and the ricksha boys.

Through the kind offices of the Imperial University of Sapporo and of the National Department of Agriculture and Commerce, Professor Tokito met us at Nagasaki, to act as escort through most of the journey in Japan.  Our first visit was to the prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station at Nagasaki.  There are four others in the four main islands, one to an average area of 4280 square miles, and to each 1,200,000 people.  The island of Kyushu, whose latitude is that of middle