Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/180

150 foaming torrents. The Kindayu Hotel, under most courteous and capable management, combines two great advantages. It supplies the foreigner with such food and general comfort as his habits generally render indispensable; at the same time, it accommodates so many Japanese of all classes, that exceptional opportunities are afforded of becoming more intimately acquainted with the latter than would be possible in their own homes, where various duties and claims absorb their time. Here they seek only health and pleasure: no obstacle but the easily surmounted barrier of language hinders mutually delightful intercourse. At least, the writer formed more friendships and obtained more glimpses of native life during a month at Ikao than at any other period of his stay in the country.

Bathing is, of course, the centre round which existence revolves. Half-a-dozen small baths, fitted with hot and cold water, that the temperature may be modified to suit each bather, enable the stranger to bathe in the solitude he prefers. But more than two dozen others, in which from three to thirteen people can bathe together, are more characteristic of the place. The largest has a hot douche, and the temperature is often as high as 115° Fahrenheit. Here the native guests return two or three times a day to soak and to gossip. In this al fresco salon laughter reigns and conversation flows as freely as the water. Surprised indeed would the bathers be to learn that a costume is deemed essential by more prurient races, whose artificial manners divorce simplicity from decency. Yet Western prudery is beginning to corrupt the upper classes, who tend to convert these social gatherings into family parties, without going so