To-day is rainy and we haven’t done much. We got here yesterday noon. The hotel is on the side of a hill with wonderful views, and is pretty good, though the one at Nara which is run by the Imperial Railway System is the only first-class one we have seen so far. In the afternoon the University sent a car and we took an auto ride into the suburbs to a famous cherry place—it was too late for blossoms, but the river and hills and woods were beautiful, and we saw the usual large crowd enjoying life. It is really wonderful the way the people go out, all classes, and the amount of pleasure they get out of doors and in the tea houses. I have never been anywhere where every day seemed so much of a holiday as in Japan—there is still sakÉ in evidence but not so much.

This month a special geisha dance is given here at a theater connected with a training school; the dance lasts an hour and is repeated four or five consecutive hours. We went last night; the dancing is much more mechanical posturing than the theater dancing, or than the little geisha dance we saw at Nara, but the color combinations and the way they handled the scenery were wonderful. There were eight very different scenes and it didn’t take more than a minute to make any change. Once a curtain was simply drawn down through a trap door, another time what had looked like a canvas mat in front of the curtain was pulled up and it turned out to be painted on one side. But they had a different method every time.

The mayor has invited me to speak to the teachers Saturday afternoon, and afterwards we are invited by the municipality to a Japanese dinner. They are also putting the city auto—the only one apparently—at our disposal, when they aren’t using it, and have arranged to take us to a porcelain and a weaving factory next Monday. This town is the headquarters of Japan for artistic production, ancient and modern. The University authorities also telephoned to Tokyo and got permission for us to visit the palaces here, but they are said not to be equal to the Nagoya ones which we missed. While at Nara we spent most of our time at the Horiuji temples, some miles out. I won’t do the encyclopedia act except to say that they are the headquarters of the introduction of Buddhism into Japan thirteen hundred years ago, which meant civilization, especially art, and have the wall frescoes, unfortunately faint, of that period, and lots of sculpture; this means wood carving, as of course there is no marble here. Well, it happened that it was the birthday of Prince Shotoku, who was the gentleman responsible for the aforesaid introduction, and of whom there are many statues, age of two, twelve and sixteen being favorites; his piety was precocious. Consequently, everything was wide open. Every kind of peep show and stall, and more than the usual hundreds of pilgrims who combine pleasure with piety in a way that beats even the Italian peasants; when they have money here they spend it; tightwadism is not a Japanese vice. Well, we were taken into the garden of the chief priest to eat our luncheon; of course, he was very busy, but greeted us in gorgeous robes and then sent out tea and rice cakes. The contrast between this lovely little garden and the drums and barkers just beyond the walls and the wonderful old artistic shrines beyond the barkers and ham and egg row was as interesting as anything in Japan.

You may remember Miss E—— is rather tall for an American woman, even. Mamma is something of an object to the country people, but Miss E—— is a spectacle. Curiosity is the only emotion the Japanese are not taught to conceal apparently. They gather around in scores, literally. I don’t know how many times I have seen parents make sure the children didn’t miss the show. Several times I have seen people walk slowly and solemnly all the way around us to make sure they missed nothing. No rudeness ever, just plain curiosity. As we were going to the museum after breakfast, a few of those children, girls, appeared and bowed. First I knew one of them had hold of each of my hands, and went with us as far as the museum—girls of nine or ten. It was touching to see their friendliness, especially one evidently rather poor, who would look up at me and laugh, and then squeeze my hand and press it against herself, and then laugh with delight again. I haven’t been able to discover when it ceases to be proper for children to be natural. Sunday morning some soldiers were going off to Manchuria—or Korea—and before eight we heard the patter of the clogs down the street and some hundred of boys and girls were marching down to the station with their teachers; the same thing next morning, for the soldiers.