FORE: "We are outside of treaty limits, and so we were obliged to have passports to come here. Foreigners may go freely within twenty-five miles of any of the treaty ports without special permission, but Kioto is just beyond the limit, as it is thirty miles from Osaka, and therefore the Japanese permit is needed. We had ours from the consul at Kobe, and had no trouble at all on coming here. A Japanese official called for them soon after we came to the hotel, and he bowed low as he received them. Then he spread the documents on the floor, and as he did so he fell on his hands and knees so as to bring his nose within six inches of the papers, and curve his back into the shape of an arch. He read the passports and copied our names into his note-book; or, at least, I suppose he did so, though I can't say positively. We can stay the time named in the permit without further interference; but if we stopped too long, we should probably be told some morning that a gentleman at Kobe was anxious to see us, and we had better start for there by the first train. The Japanese are so polite that they will never say a rude thing if they can help it, and they will even tell a plump falsehood rather than be uncivil. But the same thing has occurred in America, and so the Japs are not much worse than others, after all.
8.00 - 10.00 | JUN 09,2014
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FORE:"We had no trouble in going to see the imperial palace, or such parts of it as are open to the public, and also the temples. We could readily believe what was told usthat the temples were the finest in the whole country, and certainly some of them were very interesting. There are temples to the earth, to the sun, the moon; and there are temples to agriculture, to commerce, and a great many other things. There is a very[Pg 366] fine structure of marble more than a hundred feet high, which is called "The Gate of Extensive Peace." It is where the emperor comes on great public occasions; and beyond it are two halls where the foreign visitors are received at the beginning of each year, and where the emperor examines the implements used in the opening of the annual season of ploughing. The ploughing ceremony does not take place here, but in another part of the city, and the emperor himself holds the plough to turn the first furrow. There are some very pretty gardens in the Prohibited City, and we had a fine opportunity to learn something about the skill of the Chinese in landscape gardening. There are canals, fountains, bridges, flower-beds, groves, and little hillocks, all carefully tended, and forming a very pretty picture in connection with the temples and pavilions that stand among them.The road wound among the fields where the rice was growing luxuriantly, and where now and then they found beans and millet, and other[Pg 165] products of Japanese agriculture. The cultivation was evidently of the most careful character, as the fields were cut here and there with little channels for irrigation; and there were frequent deposits of fertilizing materials, whose character was apparent to the nose before it was to the eye. In some places, where the laborers were stooping to weed the plants, there was little more of them visible than their broad sun-hats; and it did not require a great stretch of the imagination to believe they were a new kind of mushroom from Brobdingnagian gardens. Hills like sharply rounded cones rose from each side of the narrow valley they were descending; and the dense growth of wood with which the most of them were covered made a marked contrast to the thoroughly cleared fields. The boys saw over, and over, and over again the pictures they had often seen on Japanese fans and boxes and wondered if they were realities. They had already learned that the apparently impossible pictures we find in Japanese art are not only possible, but actual; but they had not yet seen so thorough a confirmation of it as on this day's ride.
9.00 - 10.00 | FEB 15,2014
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FORE:"Ah! madam, I'll do the little I can. How am I to know him?"
11.00 - 10.00 | JUN 10,2014
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