Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. JAPAN—FIRST IMPRESSIONS. From my window at the Grand Hotel I looked out upon a strange sight. It was indeed Japan. At the hotel entrance a group of rikisha men awaited their fares as cabmen do in America, but they were not like the crowding banditti that shout "Keb? Keb?" in the face of a foreigner at the stations or docks in New York, for when one emerges from the hotel these rikisha men will merely smile, and bow, and point to their respective rikishas without offering any physical violence. If you should step into one of the vehicles, the lucky owner will bow again, and placing himself between the shafts will run as swiftly as Mercury on the wings of the wind and you arrive at your destination with a flourish, and as quickly as with a horse. For the ride, including the politeness, only five cents is asked, and ten expected. In this cold season their short muscular legs were encased in skin tight blue cotton trousers and they wore jackets of the same material, but in the hotseason they divest themselves of much more than the law would allow in America. There were children in the street; myriads of them. They seemed to run in pairs, for nearly every urchin had a baby strapped to its little back and the two were inclosed in a single padded kimona. The effect was a little startling at first, for it appeared that for every pair of legs there were two heads. It was sometimes puzzling to tell which head belonged to the legs. The children looked like the Japanese dolls that are sold in America. They had the chubby round faces, shaven scalps, (excepting the top knot,) almond shaped, bright eyes, and flat small noses of the dolls. And how they could run,—but not faster than their noses. Phil, the Philosopher, said that hereafter his donations to the missionary... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.