News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1888-08-02
IN 4 JAPANESE INN.
So me Bath Regulations which Con
fuse the Stranger.

There is no general dining room and
no set hour for meals at Japanese
inn. The guest claps his hands and
orders his food at any hour of the day or
night, and it is brought to his room on a
lacquer tray, aud set on the floor before
him, or, at most, elevated on table, or
oxen, about four inches high. In a
small room opening from the Office and
entrance room of the tea honse. two girls
were sorting the landlords new tea,
just brought in from the country. They
sat before large table, raised only q
few inches from the floor, and from q
heap of tea at one end scattered little
handfuls of tea leaves out thinly over
the lacquer top. With their deft fingers
they slide off to one side the smallest
and finest leaves from the tips of the new
shoots of the tea plant; and the larger
and coarser leaves were slipped to the
other side into a box by themselves.
They did it so quickly and with such q
sure quick touch that it was pleasure to
watch them, and to judge by the coy gig
Cling and conscious tittering, it was
pleasure to the pretty maids to be watch
ed SO attentively. In another corner of
the Yestlbule place two other little maids
were at work at what corresponds to
putting on clean pillow cases in other
countries. The japanese pillow is a
wooden box with little padded roll on
top, and at inns the pad is covered with
mulberry paper each day.
The bath room of japanese inn is as
public and open to the world as the
kitchen generally without any door, and
with glass walls or screens at the most.
In passing through to the rooms back or
going up stairs one always has the bath
in view; often q large tank, where three
or four can socially dip together. From
the late afternoon until midnight, or
later, there is always splashing in the
bath room and steam issuing from its
open door, as the natives stand i'm
mersion in boiling water with the great
est glee, and always have it at geyser
temperature. Often the tub is a small
one, and then several people take turns
in the same water. Foreigners being
known to be queer on the subject of
bathing, preferring to bathe alone and
unseen, and to have fresh water each
time are generally invited in first.
The master, as they call the mascu-
line head of our party, was invited to the
bath room at Mishima at 5 o'clock the
glass sided apartment, but the landlord
quieted him by bringing in O folding
screen about three feet high and setting
it between the tub and the general view
of the office, corridor, garden, and main
street. A too vigorous sweep of the
bather's arm knocked the screen down,
and the foreigner had to drop to his chin
in the water and call for help. The two
girls who were sorting tea ran in and set
the screen up, as cody and as much
without thought as g home servant
would go in to put up the blower on the
parlor CRATE. There are narrowing stor-
les still handed down of the experience
of early travellers in the interior, who
had the whole tea house and town crowd
to the bath room of an inn, and filed
the mir with their admiration of the
beautiful white skin of the foreign bath
cr.
In the old times the bath tub used
quite as often to be beside the doorstep,
and he who travelled the country roads
might see the inhabitants III the act of
nearing godliness as he rode by at sun
down, and the people lost nothing that
passed by.-.St. Louis Globe.