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-11-
On our way back to Osaka, we stopped to call on Mr. ^[[insertion]] ^[[Rikee]] [[/insertion]] Okada, ^[[insertion]] ^[[(Itami near Kobe)]] [[/insertion]] who has a collection of birds. There were numerous species of lovebirds and parrakeets, including a new chocolate-brown budgerigar, which he had just succeeded in breeding. He had finshes and pheasants, including the Mikado pheasant, and one of his tinamous had just laid an egg. We were told that the first cobalt budgerigar sold in Japan for 6,000 yen, and the first white for 10,000 yen

Okada is the largest saki brewer in Japan, and we saw the brewery, where saki was in all stages, from freshly-boiled rice to kegs of the finished drink. It is stored, incidentally, in cryptomeria barrels, the wood of which gives it that distinctive flavor.

Okada had a Japanese house and a foreign house, with a little rock garden between the two. We were invited in to the foreign house, where we had tea with chestnut paste cakes, and then coffee. His ten-year old son was introduced to us as an entomo ogist, and Bill promised to exchange beetles with him. We saw some of the lad's collection, well mounted and well labelled.

Finally we got back to Osaka, and had a brief visit with the circus. The frame work was of bamboo poles tied together, and covered with a high-pitched brown canvas. The stage was in the middle of the tent; one half was for the audience, the other for the performers' dressing rooms. The stage had various curtains and back drops, like a vaudeville stage, and indeed the performance, what we saw of it, was like a slow vaudeville show. We saw a double trap act, a dance, and a man who stood on his head on a trapeze 35 feet in the air. We met Mr. Ariti, who would be taken for a circus manager anywhere, clad in a heavy black brocaded silk kimono, with a gold watch chain and a couple of hunks of jade across his bosom. We were served coffee, and the inescapable photographer turned up to make a picture of us.

The audience was more interesting than the show. They sat on mats, shoeless, on a high wooden platform that sloped up toward the back of the tent, and gasped and applauded at the proper spots.

We got back to the hotel about seven, and had quite a dinner party, having invited the Komais, Nagato, Kawamura, and Mrs. Osorio to have dinner with us.

February 11 - Kyoto.

We had planned to go back to the Zoo this morning, but as it was raining we wrote letters until 11.30. then Dr. Kawamura called for us, and was joined by his son and wife (who brought me a box of Japanese chocolates).

To-day is Foundation Day, a national holiday celebrating the 2597 years since the birth of the Empire. It is also New Year's Day by the old calendar, and hence quite a day. The Kawamuras took us to Hyotan, a charming little tea house, for lunch, where we sat and admired the garden just outside the shoji, and ate nine courses, including shoots of Equisetum, sagittaria, tai or bream, turtle soup, crab, tiny trout no bigger than your little finger,fried crisp, big trout baked on a bed of salt and pine needles, quail, duck, lily bulbs, crestnut, radish leaves, bamboo and melon pickle, whitebait, fish ovaries, and rice.

After lunch, the hostess showed us how the ceremonial tea

Transcription Notes:
I've used ^[[text]] to indicate hand written text in typed page as instructed by TC - @siobhanleachman