Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/39

 Japanese being as fond of iced drinks as Americans. Three daily English newspapers, weekly mails to London and New York, three great cable routes, electric lights, breweries, gas, and water -works add utilitarian comfort to ideal picturesqueness. The summers are hot, but instead of our eccentric variations of temperature, the mercury stands at 80°, 85°, and 90° from July to September. With the fresh monsoon blowing steadily, that heat is endurable, however, and the nights are comfortable. June and September are the two nyubai, or rainy seasons, when everything is damp, clammy, sticky, and miserable. In May, heavy clothing is put away in sealed receptacles, even gloves being placed in air-tight glass or tin, to preserve them from the ruinous mildew. While earthquakes are frequent, Japan enjoys the same immunity from thunder-storms as our Pacific Coast.

There is no servant problem, and house keeping is a delight. Both Chinese and Japanese, though unfamiliar with western ways, can be trained to surpass the best European domestics. Service so swift, noiseless, and perfect is elsewhere unknown. Indeed, cooks as well as butlers are adjusted to so grand a scale of living that their employers are served with almost too much formality and elaboration. The art of foreign cookery has been handed down from those exiled chefs who came out with the first envoys, to insure them the one attainable solace of existence before the days of cables and regular steamships. There is a native cuisine of great excellence, and each legation or club chef has pupils, who pay for the privilege of studying under him, while the ordinary kitchener of the treaty ports is a more skilful functionary than the professional cook of American cities. Such cooks do their own marketing, furnish without complaint elaborate menus three times a day, serve a dinner party every night, and out of their monthly pay, ranging from ten to twenty Mexican dollars, supply their 23