Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/339

 to tell why a stick the size of one’s little finger should cost one or two dollars at the manufacturer’s shop, while a cake three or four times as large, and apparently of the same substance, should be only a tenth of that price. The few curio-shops offer almost nothing to the most diligent searcher, and the town itself makes small claim upon the average visitors, who come to see the temples and enjoy the surroundings and the view from the sacred groves on the heights. In the little row of tea-houses along the brow of Mikasayama, one is in the midst of Nara’s real life and atmosphere, and in the detached pavilions and houses scattered through their gardens the visitor is confronted with the most attractive phases of a Japanese traveller’s existence. The exquisite simplicity and beauty of these tiny houses, with their encircling galleries, all the four sides open to the air and view, the silence of the garden, broken only by the trickling water as it falls from bamboo pipe to bronze basin or tiny lakelet, render it an Arcadia. For a small sum one may have one of these tiny houses to himself, a dainty box for cha no yu, and a doll’s kitchen accompanying each pavilion. On sunny days the garden is a small paradise, with the moving figures of guests and attendants always giving a human interest to the picturesque bits of landscape. On rainy days the pictures are as many, but done in soberer tones. On those rainy June days, when there were few smart showers, but a steady, persistent, fine drizzle that left everything soaked with moisture, the domestics pattered about our garden from house to house, perched on their high wooden clogs, with their skirts tucked high above their bare feet, twirling huge oil-paper umbrellas above their heads. At night they came to close our amados noisily, and to hang up the mosquito-nets of coarsely-woven green cotton—nets the size of the room itself, fastened by cords at the four corners of the ceiling, and exhaling the musty, 323