One Sunday they made an early start and went farther afield, to the Hakone region. At Miyanoshita they left the little electric train, and lunched Japanese fashion at the Goldfish Inn. Then they wandered on down, along the road winding between the steeply sloping mountain sides, drinking in the coolness, enjoying the sweep of green bamboo and maple trees clinging to the rocky walls above them, the murmur and gurgle of the stream rushing, foaming, over great bowlders far below.
At Tonegawa where they went to the station to take the train back to Tokyo, they found a group of excited people on the platform. They were talking, gesticulating, children with arms filled with wooden trick boxes and other souvenirs regarding curiously their agitated elders. The station master was telling his story over and over again, repeating it to every new arrival, arguing and explaining. Yes, they might go to Odawara in the electric train, of course, but there was no way of going beyond that, to Tokyo. The steam trains were not running. Yes, they had stopped; they had all stopped. The entire Imperial Railways system had stopped. It was a strike, a universal strike. No, he knew very well that that had never happened in Japan before; but it had happened now, just as it had in America and England. He couldn't help it. They could go to Odawara for all he cared, but there was scant hotel accommodation to be had there. They had better stay in Hakone where there were many hotels. Yes, the trains were not running--he began to explain again to some newcomers--there was no getting back to Tokyo at present.
"Well, evidently we are in for it, Sadako-san. The man is right. We had better find some place here. I have heard there are good hotels in this village." She had placed her hand on his arm, seemed irresolute, frightened. "You are not afraid, are you, Sadako-san?"
"No, I'm not afraid of you. Come, let us go."
They found an inn in Tonegawa, a huge building with great wings, many-storied, striving up the hillside, seeming, like the trees, to cling precariously thereto. The inn people were a little doubtful. Yes, no. They had only one room left and that was really not a room at all; it was a banquet hall, not used for sleeping. The other hotels? No, they were crowded, too, with the unexpected rush of holiday seekers left stranded here. Yes, he might have the big room. Other refugees were approaching down the road. Kent made up his mind. "_Shikataganai_, Sadako-san, we must make the best of it. All right, I'll take it."
