Chiuzenji and Yumoto
The pilgrims sleep in Government barracks in the village, a few coppers securing a mat on the floor and the use of the common fireplace. Their vow to Nantaisan being accomplished, they make the half-circuit of the lake, to visit the hidden shrines and temples of the forest shores, and then trudge to Yumoto for its hot sulphur baths and scenery, or home to their ripening rice-fields.
From across the water Chiuzenji village looks a small, yellow patch, lying between the unbroken green slope of Nantaisan and the great lake. Its five tea-houses rise straight from the water’s edge, each with a triple row of outer galleries overlooking it. The way of life at the Tsutaya, Idzumiya, Nakamarya, and the rest is much more Japanese than in the frequented inns of Nikko. Chairs and tables are conceded to foreigners, but everybody must sleep on the floor, wash face and hands in the common wash-basin in the open court, and go about the house stocking-footed, or wear the stiff, heelless, monkey-skin slippers furnished by the inn. To call a servant one claps his palms, and a long-drawn “Hei!” announces that the rosy-cheeked mountain maid has heard, and the gentle swaying of the house proclaims that she is running up the stairs. The washing of rice, vegetables, fish, kitchen utensils, and family clothing goes on from the single plank of a pier running from the lowest floor of the house. Each inn has a similar pier, where sociable maidens chatter as they stir and wash the rice in bamboo baskets. The servants of the houses take the whole lake for wash-hand basin and tooth-brush cup, and the pier is a small stage, upon which these local companies play their unstudied parts.
As the finest country walk in England is agreed to be that from Stratford to Warwick, so is the way from Chiuzenji to Yumoto the finest country walk in Japan, for its eight miles of infinite variety. First, the broad foot-path wanders for two miles along the shores of
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