Life in a Japanese hotel is a continual round of novelties and interesting experiences to the uninitiated Western traveller. Before entering the guest must remove his shoes--a more sensible custom than that of the Occident of removing the hat--for which tracks in the dirt? With a pair of house slippers to replace his shoes, the guest is ushered into his room, a compartment without any furniture except a Japanese screen and a picture or two. In winter there may be a stove, which consists of a small circular receptacle resembling a jardinière and containing ashes--in the centre of which are a few live pieces of charcoal. As soon as the guest is in his room the proprietor enters with a blank form which is to be filled out and which gives a complete record of the new arrival--his age, occupation, home, reasons for being away from home, destination, etc. This information is turned over by the inn-keeper to the chief of police and thus a close tab is kept on every visitor to a Japanese city. After this formality, the maid enters the room with a kimono and if you give her a chance will completely disrobe you. There are no chairs; nothing but a little mat upon which you coil in tailor fashion. There are no beds; retiring appliances consisting of a thin mattress and quilts which are spread out on the floor at bed-time each night and taken up again in the morning to be placed in compartments in the wall of the room. There is no dining table but in its place is a little tray, sometimes elevated on legs, brought in from the kitchen at meal times. There are no knives, forks and spoons, nor plates. In fact, everything that one would expect to find in an hotel is missing and some other device is in its place. Probably the most unusual feature to the western traveller is the accommodation for taking a bath. This generally consists of a fair-sized room in which are a dozen or more little round wooden tubs where men, women and children all gather at the same time and perform their daily ablutions.
This, briefly, is the lay-out which a traveller finds when he stays at a Japanese hotel. As much of a novelty as it was for Richardson and me to experience the sensations of this kind of inn, it was an equal novelty for the Japanese to have us as guests. We often encountered considerable difficulty in convincing the proprietor that we really wished to stay at his hotel. In addition to the handicap of carrying on a conversation without the use of a language, for we knew nothing of Japanese, we frequently had to overcome the hotel man's notion that we were trying to play a joke on him. Once in the hotel we were constantly the centre of attraction and source of interest not only to those employed about the place but also to the other guests.