Next we have soup, which we drink from small bowls. Then come pickles and strange kinds of food that we have never before seen. Last of all rice is served from a large, round, wooden box, and we drink our tea from tiny cups.
There are no knives and no forks, and so we observe our Japanese friends as they eat with two long wooden sticks. Then we take our chop sticks and try to eat the rice as they do. Hana and Tora watch us, but they are too polite to smile.
After the supper is over, the grown people sit on the floor and talk to one another, or watch the children at their games. Hana and Tora play with small cards on which are printed the strange-looking letters of the Japanese alphabet.
And so the evening passes and bedtime comes. The little maidservant takes us upstairs. We see no beds, and we wonder where we shall sleep. But screens are soon drawn together, and a room is made for us.
Then the little maid slides back another screen, and there in the wall is a closet. Out of this she takes soft, thick quilts, and spreads them on the matting, one on top of another. For a pillow she brings each of us a small block of wood.
We do not like the wooden pillows, but we sleep soundly all night in our beds on the floor.
merry alcove festival polite packed budding storehouse sashes
A beautiful garden lies back of the house where Hana and Tora live.
In Japan the people love the flowering trees and plant them in their gardens. Now it is early springtime and the plum trees are just beginning to burst into bloom.
The children ask us to go with them and look for the first plum blossoms. The pink buds are pushing out of their brown coverings. "Oh, I am so glad!" Hana says. "Soon the peach trees will bloom, and then it will be time for the Doll Festival.
"How I wish I could show you my dolls! I have more than a hundred, but they are all packed away in the storehouse.
"Some of them are very old. They used to belong to my grandmother and to my great-grandmother. The doll I like best was given to me when I was a baby. It is as large as I am, and it can wear my clothes.
"When the Doll Festival comes I have a merry time. In the morning when I get up I find all my dolls waiting for me in the guest room.