Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/209

 cushions, a tea-tray, and tabako bon, were all that the rooms contained, until our incongruous bags and bundles marred their exquisite simplicity. The landlord, with many bows and embarrassed chucklings, greeted us there, and presented a most superb, long stemmed Jacqueminot rose, whose fragrance soon filled the whole place.

When we went out for a walk all Mishima joined us; and with a following of two hundred children and half as many elders, we turned into the grounds of an old temple shaded by immense trees and protected by an ancient moat. The brigade clattered after us across the stone bridge of a great lotus pond, where the golden carp are as large and as old as the mossy-backed patriarchs at Fontainebleau and Potsdam, and snapped and fought for the rice-cakes we threw them as if it were their first feast. Farther in the temple grounds gorgeously-colored cocks with trailing tails, and pretty pigeons are kept as messengers of the gods, and a toothless old man makes a slender living by selling popped beans to feed them. Prayers for rain offered up at this temple always prevail, and we had barely returned to the tea-house before a soaking storm set in and restricted us to our inn for entertainment.

The large matted room, or space at the front of the tea-house, was at once office, hall, vestibule, pantry, and store-room. At one side opened a stone-floored kitchen with rows of little stone braziers for charcoal fires, on which something was always steaming and sputtering. Chief-cook, under-cooks, and gay little maids pattered around on their clogs, their sleeves tied up, hoisting water from the well, and setting out trays with the various dishes of a Japanese dinner. There is no general dining-room, nor any fixed hour for meals in a Japanese inn. At any moment, day or night, the guest may clap his hands and order his food, which is brought to his room on a tray and set on the floor, or on the ozen, a table about 193