Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/103

Rh glad to see you, my good fellow,” I reply, laughing as naturally as I can.

Kotmasu is so terribly English.

Even his attire this morning is that odd mixture of Anglo–Japanese garments he so much affects, consisting of a straw hat and tennis flannels, worn in conjunction with the flowered dressing-gown-like garment of a well-to-do merchant.

He looks a strange figure as he stands talking to me, in the sun, at the corner of the little narrow alley leading from the water-side into one of the newer streets, the incongruities of his garments thrown up into strong relief by a background formed by the sail of a large trading-junk alongside the quay, which a swarm of Japanese coolies, all dressed alike in tight hose and dark butcher’s-blue cotton tunics, with some bizarre device in a different colour on the back, were unloading with extraordinary rapidity.