No hotel so well or so thoughtfully
administered have I ever stayed in; nor was I ever in another where the
water for the bath gushes in from a natural hot spring. But hot springs
are numerous in this region, while there is a gorge which I visited,
some four miles distant, where boiling sulphur hisses and bubbles for
ever and aye.
Many of the Myanoshita dishes were new to me and welcome. There is an
excellent salad called "Slow," and the bamboo, which is Japan's best
friend--serving the nation in scores of ways: as fences, as walls, as
water-pipes, as supports, as carrying-poles, as thatch, as fishing-
rods--here found its way into the salad bowl and was not distasteful.
The custom of drinking a glass of orange juice before breakfast might
well be adopted with us; but not the least of the oddities of England
which I realised as I moved about the earth is our unwillingness to eat
fruit. Japan also has a perfect mineral water, "Tansan."
When not making long expeditions to catch new glimpses of Fuji I roamed
about the hill-sides among the little villages, or leaned over crazy
bridges to watch the waterfalls beneath; for there is water everywhere,
tumbling down to the distant ocean, a wedge of which can be seen from
the hotel windows. This Japanese valley might be in Switzerland, save
for the absence of any but human life. Not a cow, not a goat.
The labourers wear blue linen smocks, usually with some device upon
them, and they merge into the landscape as naturally as French or
Belgian peasants.
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