Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/200

196 about it borrowed a chair and table, probably from the station house and its solitary policeman, and provided 'beefu teki' and 'pan' (bread), in order to make things homelike, as he said. And while he busied us with these incidentals, he engaged a sampan to carry us to the station. I might mention that in real Japan the traveler can, or should, do little without the aid of his innkeeper—if one wishes to go to the railroad, a theater, a shop, or to hire a boat, a coolie, a

jinrick-shaw—it is de rigeur to go first to the ever-present inn. I soon discovered that our host was on excellent terms with the zoological people, for the station had formerly been located near by in the town. But the town was found to be not the best of locations; there was too much noise, and—fish market, for example—so the building was moved bodily around the point to a small rugged peninsula which forms the harbor of Aburatsubo, about a mile away. Presently our host shelled us in rain coats and deposited us in our sampan, and our ferryman, sculling with a heavy balanced oar, shot us beyond the island, whose lighthouse guides the steamers into the mouth of the bay of Tokyo, and then, turning sharply, he skirted the coast, around the edge of the sea of