A Trip to Nikko
The Japanese bed is the floor, with a wooden box under the neck for a pillow and a futon for a covering. To the foreigner the Japanese landlord allows five or six futons, or cotton-wadded comforters, and they make a tolerable mattress, although not springy, and rather apt to be damp and musty. The traveller carries his own sheets, woolen blankets, feather or air pillows, and flea-powder, the latter the most necessary provision of all. The straw mats and the futons swarm with fleas, and without a liberal powdering, or, better, an anointing with oil of pennyroyal, it is impossible to sleep. These sleeping arrangements are not really comfortable, and, after the fatigue of walking and mountain-climbing, stiffen the joints. By day the futons are placed in closets out of sight, or hung over the balconies to air, coming back damper than ever, if the servants forget to bring them in before sunset. The bedroom walls are the sliding paper screens; and if one’s next neighbor be curious, he may slip the screen a little or poke a hole through the paper. A whisper or a pin-drop travels from room to room, and an Anglo-Saxon snorer would rock the whole structure.
At ordinary Japanese inns the charge for a day’s accommodation ranges from forty cents to one dollar. A Japanese can get his lodgings and all his meals for about thirty cents, but foreigners are so clumsy, untidy, and destructive, and they demand so many unusual things, that they are charged the highest price, which includes lodging, bedding, and all the tea, rice, and hot water they may wish. All other things are extra. In the beaten tracks bread and fresh beef may always be found, and each year there is less need of carrying the supplies formerly so essential. Chairs and tables, cots, knives and forks, and corkscrews have gradually penetrated to the remotest mountain hamlets. At the so-called foreign hotels at Nikko and other resorts, charges are usually
145
