Here we are, one week after landing, on a hill in a beautiful garden of trees on which the buds are already swelling. The plums will soon be in bloom, and in March the camellias, which grow to fairly large trees. In the distance we see the wonderful Fuji, nearby the other hills of this district, and the further plains of the city. Just at the foot of our hill is a canal, along which is an alley of cherry trees formerly famous, but largely destroyed by a storm a few years ago.

We have a wonderful apartment to ourselves, mostly all windows, which in this house are glass. A very large bedroom, a small dressing room, and a study where I now sit with the sun coming in the windows which are all its sides. We need this sun, though the hibashi, or boxes of charcoal, do wonders in warming up your feet and drying hair, as I am now doing. We are surrounded by all the books on Japan that modern learning has produced, so we have never a waiting moment. The house is very large, with one house after another covering the hilltop and connected by the galleries that are cut off the sides of each room in succession. I shall try to get a photo. At the extreme end of the house is Mr. X——’s library of several rooms, and at the limit of that the tea room for the tea ceremonies. Our host is not one of the new rich who buy sets at a million dollars for performing this ceremony. He laughs at that. But there is a gold lacquer table which is like transfixed sunshine, and there are other pieces of old furniture, which are priceless now, and which have come down in his family. You would be amused to see us at breakfast, which O-Tei, the maid assigned to us, serves in our sun parlor. First we have fruit. Two little lacquer tables to move wherever we want to sit. The dishes and service are in our fashion in this house. Nice old blue Canton plates and other things Japanese. After fruit she makes toast over the charcoal in the hibashi, two little iron sticks stuck in the bread to hold it. On these prongs she hands us the toast. Meantime she teaches us Japanese and we teach her English which she already knows, and she giggles every time we speak. Well, we put our toast down on the plate and she disappears. The coffee pot is on a side table and we desperately look for cups for ourselves, though with some fear of disturbing the etiquette. No cups, she forgot them. After a while she comes up again with the cups and we get coffee, then she goes down again and brings scrambled eggs on the nice old blue plates. Then she giggles a little more and talks in that soft voice that is like nothing else we ever heard, as she hands us a nice hot piece of toast on an iron spike; she is much pleased and giggles because I tell her the toast is not harmed by dropping it on the clean floor, and she walks off into the big bedroom to bring the coffee from the gas heater. It is all like a pretty play unmarred by any remote ideas about efficiency, and time and labor-saving devices. Then two maids make our beds; then they dust the floor, one holding up the sofa on edge while the other whisks underneath it, and they smile and bow and take an interest in every move we make as if we were their dearest friends.

Enter now the housekeeper who, with many bows, announces v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y that she would like to accompany me to go about the city and to explain things to me, as I would thus teach her English. I asked if she were going to church and she said she wasn’t a Christian. Think what a funny sound that has. She is the secretary of Mr. X—— and a student in the new Christian college of which he is the President. She comes in now to wait on us at breakfast and she stays and repeats English after us. She knows a lot of English, but it is so literary that it is quite amusing to turn her into the ways of ordinary talk. To get her to open her mouth and break the polite Japanese whisper, in which the Japanese women speak, is what I work most on. Yesterday we visited the Women’s University which is within walking distance of this house. The President, Mr. Naruse, is dying of cancer. He is in bed but is able to talk quite naturally. He has made a farewell address to his students, has said good-bye to his faculty in a speech, and has named the dean, who is acting in his place now, as his successor. At this University they teach flower arrangement, long sword, and Japanese etiquette, and the chief warden is a fine woman. She says I may come in as much as I like to see those different things.

In the afternoon we had callers again, among them two women. Women are rare. One, a Dr. R——, is an osteopath who has practiced here for fifteen years and is an old friend of our host’s. The second, Miss T——, has just returned from seven years in our country. I heard much of her at Stanford and brought letters to her. She has a chair in the Women’s University. It is a chair of Sociology, but she says the authorities are afraid the time has not yet come for her to start on sociology, so she will begin with the teaching of English and work into sociology by the process of ingratiating it into her classes. She is an interesting personality. She was sent to me to say I might be lonely because your father was away so she was to take me, with any other friends I wanted, to the theater. As we had already been to the Imperial Theater and sat in the Baron’s box it was finally arranged to go to the Kabuki, where we sit on the floor and see real old Japanese acting, which I am very anxious to do. I understand it begins at 11 in the morning and lasts until ten at night.