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A Ramble in Tokio, Japan

APANESE people are None of the women and girls wore bon among the most interest- nets or head-covering; their gracefully. ing in the world. Old dressed hair making such trifles unneces- Japan, after a sleep of sary. ages, is waking up, and A strange and most outlandish din was bids fair to soon be as kept up by the swarms of pedestrians, enlightened as any coun- whose clogs of hard wood scraped the try of the globe. One of gravel-paved streets. Only the yakumin, the principal towns is Tokio; it is the or government officials, wore hats, like New York of Japan, and the young peo- round basket-lids, tied over ears and chin. ple who here read about it would open Gentlemen strode along with their two their eyes in wonder if they should swords protruding from their belts like visit it. drumsticks from a trussed turkey. Some Hon Cho Dori, or main street, in the had their hands outside in the cold, but heart of Tokio, is one of the most bust- others carried them snugly folded inside ling in the capital, filled with lively shops, their bosom. Not a button could be seen many of them wholesale. Fire-proof on any one's clothing, but only girdles store houses, built of wood coated with and fastenings of silk. clay-signs of wealth and long-established business are numerous in it. The dictates of King Tonsor compelled all males to shave their forehead and mid- Says a traveller: I shall never forget scalp, on which lay in state a top-knot my first ramble through Hon Cho Dori. waxed as stiff as a gun-hammer. The Business was at its height. The streets ladies carried oil-paper umbrellas, for the resounded with the "Hai-ho, ho-hai" cry air threatened snow. Babies were carried of push-cart men, drawing heavy loads of on the back, the nurse amusing them rice, oil, bales of cotton, silk, tea, etc. with a stick and hollow balls blown from Bare-limbed men, their legs lobster-red wheat-paste. a with cold, with palanquins on their Amongst the things that strike shoulders and resting-sticks in hand, stranger is the famous bookshop and cirhurried along, anon stopping to change culating library. The proprietor is a shoulders. Others were trudging on, native of the northern province of Nambu, staff in hand, their backs laden with the whose prince or daimio lives in Tokio. monstrous masks of long-nosed tengu His crest or armorial blazonry is a stork's imps for the heathenish dances in front of head enfolded in its own wings. The the temples. Some bore portable shrines, book-man is proud of his master and saying prayers at houses for a few iron nativity. cash" Scarcely any one had on a hat.

Another interesting place to visit is a