=April 13.=--The way that maid manages a four-course dinner, with three saucepans and half a dozen bits of charcoal in the fivepenny stove, is nothing short of miraculous--everything was very well cooked too. I wasted about an hour over the house this morning, but got off to the Institute after that. It is rather farther to go now, and takes some time even with the tram, but one can’t get everything one wants, and were I near the Institute, I should be so far from all the foreigners as to be quite isolated, and that, I find, in this climate, is not very healthy.
=April 14.=--The cherry trees are now wonderfully beautiful; contrary to the croakings of the pessimists, the snow has not ruined them, and the trees are covered with bloom. They say they are bleached, and certainly the pink is so delicate as to be entirely elusive when one looks at an individual bloom. I went to the renowned Oyeno Park, where groves of trees are laden with bloom. It was a little late, and some of the petals were falling, so that there seemed to be a whirling snowstorm of flakes that gleamed pearly white in the sunshine. The ground was covered, and all the pools of water left by the recent snows were thickly fringed with white. Tokio is everywhere a fairy-land of beauty, for cherry trees by the hundred are blooming in it. One has the impression of being in the midst of clouds that float between the branches of the pine trees, and rest over grey roofed cottages. The strip of soil in front of the Embassy is covered with a treble avenue of flowering trees, and the paths are petal-strewn between the brilliant green grass patches. The difference in the grass in the last two weeks is very noticeable--from a brown patchy covering over bare earth it has become a thick emerald cloak.
=April 15.=--My little maid’s guardian came to see me and to thank me for taking care of her. As a matter of fact it is she who is taking care of me; I couldn’t have imagined a house run more smoothly. The guardian is a nice man, good-looking, though middle-aged, and able to speak German, so we got on all right. He brought me some pots of pretty flowers, and some pansies with scent which are treasures, as the lovely pansies here are scentless. It is a very curious point, how well English flowers grow here, getting lovely large blooms, but one and all losing their scent. It makes one quite sad when great luscious roses, pansies, and even mignonette, are scentless--they seem to have lost their souls.