There are, however, various styles of dressing the hair of girls, by which you can form a pretty accurate estimate of any girl’s age up to her marriage, when the _coiffure_ undergoes a definite change. The boys all look top-heavy and their heads of an abnormal size, partly from a hideous practice of shaving the head altogether for the first three years. After this the hair is allowed to grow in three tufts, one over each ear, and the other at the back of the neck; as often, however, a tuft is grown at the top of the back of the head. At ten the crown alone is shaved and a forelock is worn, and at fifteen, when the boy assumes the responsibilities of manhood, his hair is allowed to grow like that of a man. The grave dignity of these boys, with the grotesque patterns on their big heads, is most amusing.
Would that these much-exposed skulls were always smooth and clean! It is painful to see the prevalence of such repulsive maladies as _scabies_, scald-head, ringworm, sore eyes, and unwholesome-looking eruptions, and fully 30 per cent of the village people are badly seamed with smallpox.
Shops and Shopping—The Barber’s Shop—A Paper Waterproof—Ito’s Vanity—Preparations for the Journey—Transport and Prices—Money and Measurements.
I HAVE had to do a little shopping in Hachiishi for my journey. The shop-fronts, you must understand, are all open, and at the height of the floor, about two feet from the ground, there is a broad ledge of polished wood on which you sit down. A woman everlastingly boiling water on a bronze _hibachi_, or brazier, shifting the embers about deftly with brass tongs like chopsticks, and with a baby looking calmly over her shoulders, is the shopwoman; but she remains indifferent till she imagines that you have a definite purpose of buying, when she comes forward bowing to the ground, and I politely rise and bow too. Then I or Ito ask the price of a thing, and she names it, very likely asking 4s. for what ought to sell at 6d. You say 3s., she laughs and says 3s. 6d.; you say 2s., she laughs again and says 3s., offering you the _tabako-bon_. Eventually the matter is compromised by your giving her 1s., at which she appears quite delighted. With a profusion of bows and “_sayo naras_” on each side, you go away with the pleasant feeling of having given an industrious woman twice as much as the thing was worth to her, and less than what it is worth to you!