Jinrikisha Days in Japan
Up over Kanaya pass we toiled slowly, reaching at last a little eyrie of a tea-house, where the landlord pointed with equal pride to the view and to several pairs of muddy shoes belonging, he said, to the honorable gentlemen who were about piercing the mountain under us with a railway tunnel. Under a shady arbor is a huge, round bowlder, fenced in carefully and regarded reverently by humble travellers. According to the legend it used to cry at night like a child until Kobo Daishi, the inventor of the Japanese syllabary, wrote an inscription on it and quieted it forever. No less famous than Kobo Daishi’s rock is the midzu ame of this Kanaya tea-house, and the dark browm sweet is put in dainty little boxes that are the souvenirs each pilgrim carries away with him.
Farther along the main road, with its arching shade-trees, the glossy dark tea-bushes gave way to square miles of rice and wheat fields. Here and there a patch of intense green verdure showed the young blades of rice almost ready to be transplanted to the fields, whence the wheat had just been garnered, the rice giving way in turn to some other cereal, all farming land in this fertile region bearing three annual crops.
A few villages showed the projecting roofs peculiar to the province of Totomi, and then the pretty tea-house at Hamamatsu quite enchanted us after our experiences with the poor accommodations of some of the provincial towns. A rough curbed well in the court-yard, with a queer parasol of a roof high over the sweep, a pretty garden all cool, green shade, a stair-way, steep and high, and at the top a long, dim corridor, with a floor of shining, dark keyaki wood. This was the place that made us welcome; even stocking-footed we half feared to tread on those brilliantly-polished boards. Our balcony overlooked a third charming garden, and each little room had a distinctive beauty of wooden ceilings, recesses, screens, and fanciful windows.
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