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Updated: May 5, 2025
She prostrates herself at once, and with her forehead against the floor says something, indrawing her breath in a most accomplished hiss. Do you think we ought to do it back again? Yosoji interprets that with great good luck the hot water is ready, and if we go down now we can have a bath.
I make a desperate attempt and explode suddenly, the maid giggles, you roar, and even Yosoji, who is somewhere in the background, begins tittering. After this the ice is broken; we entreat Yosoji to get the maid away without hurting her feelings, and when she has departed we finish the rice with our fingers.
I ask Yosoji how any European travelling alone could discover where he had got to, and he smilingly points out a board at the extreme end of the station with some of our own lettering on it. No one could possibly see it from the incoming train. We still feel absurdly big as we get out of the little train on its little narrow gauge line and wait while Yosoji captures our luggage from the van.
Then we plunge into cool woods and follow little paths up and down, and when we want to get out and walk, feeling lazy brutes to sit still and let a fellow-creature haul us uphill, Yosoji says no, it would hurt the feelings of our men, who would imagine we thought them poor weak things and scorned them.
An hour later we have had a sluice down with cold water from the brass basins, eaten a most unsatisfying and unsubstantial breakfast, much like the dinner the night before, minus the fish, and are out to visit the village schools, at the suggestion of Yosoji, before going on. They are worth visiting!
All the people who were in the kitchen have by this time drifted in here, and stand in interested contemplation of our proceedings. "Which is the bath?" I ask Yosoji. He motions toward the tub of boiling water. "But that's too hot; we shall be boiled sitting on the top of a fire," I explain. Thereupon a great commotion ensues, embers are raked out, and there is much running about and chattering.
As we near our hotel we tell the interpreter, whose "honourable name" we have learned is Yosoji, everything belonging to other people is "honourable" here, that we would like to see the palace where the Emperor lives; so he gives an order to the rickshaw man, and we set out once more.
The sliding panels opening on to the verandah have been pushed back, and there stand my landlord and landlady, and the little maid-servant, and several other persons, bowing and prostrating themselves and asking innumerable questions, to which, as there is no Yosoji, I can give no answers. Everyone in Japan asks questions, I find; it is supposed to show a polite interest in you.
All this is interpreted by Yosoji, who no doubt puts our answers into the flowery language Japanese courtesy demands; for instance, when I say that I like Japan very much, I am sure, from the breathless sentence that follows, that he is saying that the strangers think the honourable country of Japan far more beautiful and wonderful than their own poor land.
I must have those to take home; they won't take up any room. As we enter the Jap lady who is selling the prints gives a long hiss. She bows profoundly, and so do we. They won't know us when we get home! "But why did she hiss?" you ask Yosoji. He says it is a sign of respect. Oh! I thought they were nervous! How funny!
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