I had dinner out, and then went to a dance in the evening, where the belle of the ball was a girl whose father was English and mother was Japanese. She had such lovely shoulders that I longed to be a man and marry her.
=November 10.=--I stopped all night with the P----s. Poor Professor P---- had to go off somewhere at 6 in the morning. As one can hear a whisper from one room in the next, of course it woke me up, but I was glad, because the sunrise was one of magically lovely clear tints, that I have never seen out of Japan, and it shed a fairy radiance on glowing crimson maple and golden _Ginkgo_ trees.
In the afternoon we had tea with Professor _M----_ and Professor _F----_. The latter took me to the famous popular shows of chrysanthemums, where the chief feature is the life-size models of actors and theatre scenes, all made of millions of minute flowering chrysanthemums still _growing_, the red skirt, white sleeves or golden shield all being masses of self-coloured flowers. The effect is, of course, simply curious, and an evidence of gardener’s skill--not pretty. Some of the other exhibits were huge plants, with a “thousand” blooms (really 300–400) all simultaneously open, and other plants with every imaginable kind of chrysanthemum growing from one main stem, a triumph of grafting, but not of beauty.
=November 15.=--A quiet day’s work, and in the late afternoon tea at the British Embassy. In the evening an invitation “by order of the Emperor” arrived for the Imperial garden party at Akasaka Palace. It was amusing to see the awe with which my landlady viewed it--the Imperial Crest being almost sacred in this country. She took it in her hands as a good Catholic might a piece of the true cross, and raised it three times to her forehead, and asked leave to take it to show her husband. I shine from the reflected glory.
=November 16.=--The morning was spent at the Institute, and then the afternoon at the lovely house and garden of Professor _S----_. It is a very large and beautifully unspoiled Japanese garden of the old style. The maple trees were red and the pines green--and here and there among them were bushes bearing the loveliest fresh pink and crimson roses. October and November are called by some “the little Spring,” and these rose bushes might well be those of June with us. The scent of the roses is not so sweet as with us, but the texture of the petals more delicate, so that they have a wonderful semi-transparency, which ours seldom attain.