Luncheon.—Rice cakes or boiled rice, with stewed fruit and tea.
Dinner.—Boiled rice and fish, stewed dried fruit, hard-boiled eggs, more rice cakes and tea.
This is the diet of the Japanese—the kind of food that kept the samurai in the best of health, in phenomenal strength, and with muscles that defied strains that would be appalling to the average Caucasian. If any hearty eater among the white races believes such a diet would prove weakening, let him try it for a few weeks, and he will discover that his strength is on the increase. Such stomach troubles as indigestion will have disappeared. The man who goes to Japan with a dyspepsia cure, unless he can find trade enough among the foreign residents, is sure to fail.
Since all strength must come primarily from the stomach, the Japanese teacher of jiu-jitsu soon loses all patience with a pupil who is not willing to follow the diet that will give the most force and best tone to his system. This the Japanese diet unquestionably does.
