Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/146

132 “Mousmé, you’ll be ill.”

“No, Cy-reel, not nearly so sweet and ill-producing as teriyaki.”

I laughed at the gentle sophistry and suggested that we should go to breakfast.

After the meal a huge bullock-cart came along the road which runs at the foot of our sloping garden. It is laden with New Year’s gifts to tempt those who have put off the inevitable spending of sen and yen till the last possible moment.

Mousmé drew me along the garden path, past the iris pond, in the shade of which gold-fish are keeping New Year’s day on a fly-and-mosquito diet, to the side of the cart. The proprietors in new suits are explaining the merits of their wares, which are cheapened enormously as at Western “sale” times. A light air stirred the paper lanterns with which the cart was decked.

One represented a huge gold-fish with a gold and vermilion body and fins boldly