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44 

Monday Nov. 23
[[strikethrough]] February 13 [[/strikethrough]]

To come back to my first experience of the Japanese landscape. It is every bit as picturesque as the Jap. prints had led me to believe. The country side is beautifully landscaped & irrigated right up to the edge of the railroad, not an inch to spare. Lovely to see the rice fields under water, the bamboo shoots, the grass dykes - the long wooden fences for the drying of the grass. Speaking of grass - the grass thatched roof tops, beautiful in shape. The grass covered trunks of the trees - they know how to protect them from the cold, the charming shapes the hay stacks after harvest [[images of bell shape & pagoda shape stacks]]
Some bell shaped, others pagoda shaped & some large one like the shapes of their houses. Every glimpse one saw of the primitive life of the peasant figures, on the fields, in their houses, on the village



45

Monday, Feb. 23
[[strikethrough]] February 14 [[/strikethrough]]

streets was simply out of an art book. Then the shapes of the straw hung up to dry. It is an art just how they do it & the forms they pile it into. Then always the different flowers, particularly the bright yellow chrysanthemums which is their national flower & the lovely red gold of their 'Maiden Hair trees'.

After we had come to Nikko & passed thru the village [[strikethrough]] of Nikko [[/strikethrough]] - we began the long, narrow winding ride to the top of the mountain. We passed Lake Chuzenjie [[Chuzenji]] - 4,000 ft. above sea level to arrive at Mt. Nautai 8,197 feet high where stands the beautiful Shinto Shrine. (Black-hair mountain or Futa-ara-san (two storms mountain has a water fall called Kegon Fall. Its height is 330 & is 25 feet wide.) Also another water-fall called Shira-kumo-notaki (white-clouds - fall). Kegon Fall is noted for