I went to lunch at the Faculty and found many, but not all, the Professors there. Term has only theoretically begun. The day has been gloriously brilliant, so that one could shout for joy, though after sunset it was frightfully cold. At half-past five the stars came out, brilliant points of diamond light through the trees.
=January 11.=--I spent all the morning testing copper disks and the gas-engine, etc., though it was Saturday. Late in the afternoon I called on a Mrs. _K----_ with a card of introduction. Unfortunately, I have been far too busy to present half my introductions, but I wanted to know some more Japanese ladies, so called on this one. What a contrast she was to the others I have met! Running downstairs to meet me and chattering all kinds of greetings, expostulating against my removing my shoes (a thing, by the way, which is absolutely essential in all true Japanese houses, because of their beautiful floors), commenting on the weather, and thanking me for coming till my breath was quite taken away. Soon I discovered the reason for all these unusual things--she had been eleven years in America, and had studied at one of the Universities. Her husband had been eight years in America. She was exceedingly nice, but so unlike a Japanese! with her thickly scattered adjectives of “dear,” “sweet,” and “lovely,” though she was dressed in Japanese style.
We were comparing the marriage customs of the different nations. In Japan a man asks, “Whom does my father and mother wish for me,” if he does ask anything at all. In New York the man asks, “How much money has she?”--in Boston, “In which College did she study?”--in Philadelphia, “Who were her ancestors?”--and in England, “Does she love me?” Mrs. _K----’s_ marriage seems to have been made in Boston: her subject was zoology and her husband’s medicine--all very unusual in a Japanese. She informed me that Japanese clothes are so much more difficult to make than foreign, which astonished me, for there are only straight lines in a Japanese dress. But it has to be evenly padded and lined, which makes the trouble. She also informed me that all the English and Americans married to Japanese are so “sweet and dear”--the different customs making their characters patient and charming.
