_September 26th._--I am writing in the most delightful real Japanese house, far away in the midst of these beautiful mountains of Nikko.
The thin wooden frame of the house is covered with luminous parchment paper, and these are the walls that divide us from the outside world. They are not permanent ones, for they slide back one behind the other, a succession of paper screens, until the house is open to the street and there is only the shell of a habitation left in the roof, and one paper wall behind. The second-floor storey (if there is one) is marked by a long balcony running completely round, and here in cupboards at either end are kept the wooden shutters that slide into grooves and close in the balconies, in winter and at night, and give to all the houses the dull appearance of a blank wooden wall at sundown. Inside, the roof and floors are of white wood, and the latter is covered with spotless matting; but I am glad to say that there are European concessions here, in the shape of a table, chair, and washstand and bed, on which is laid a clean starched kimono to go to the bath in. In a Japanese house we should find no furniture at all. Their rooms are absolutely bare; they eat, sit and sleep on the floor, and from out of a cupboard in a recess will come the "futons," or thick wadded quilts, and the square piece of wood with a hollow for the neck, where a soft wad of paper is inserted, and which is used for a pillow by the ladies to save their elaborate headdress from getting deranged. As they cannot dress their hair themselves, it is only done occasionally, and must thus be considered even when sleeping.
The construction of these houses is so delightfully simple, for, excepting the polished ladder which leads upstairs, there is no plan of the rooms. They are made larger or smaller, more or less, according to the want of the hour, by means of those successions of sliding screens, and a little pushing and sliding will make the large room you are using, into five or six smaller ones in a second. These tea-houses are charming in their compact simplicity, their faultless cleanliness, and particular neatness.
It was at four o'clock this afternoon that we arrived at Nikko, and drove from the station through the end of the great cryptomeria avenue, past the village, until the jinrikisha was suddenly shot round a corner, down a narrow passage, and stopped at the courtyard step of the Suzuki Hotel. Here quite a little crowd of bowing attendants received us with many deep salaams, and sucking-in of breath; one relieved me of an umbrella, another of a cloak, and another of a book, and went before us, encouraging us with graceful gesticulations and faces wreathed in smiles to enter the house, impressing us in an indescribably charming manner that we were showing them but too much honour in doing so. Of course we drank tea--it is the first ceremony on entering any Japanese house; and then came the second one--the solemn ceremony of the bath.