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You are in the eastern outskirts of the city, looking toward the north; the greater part of Kyoto is off at your left.

Just such flower-beauty you can see in hundreds of places all over Japan-the commonest people here love wistaria with special enthusiasm, and great skill is shown in cultivating and training the vines. This trellis, though which you see the sunshine playing with the drooping flower-clusters, belongs to a little tea-house where light refreshments are served. You can sit here on one of these mats if you like, and that young woman who stands by the post--a nesan or waitress--will hasten to bring you tea and little rice cakes. If you wish to tell her "I am hungry," you must say "O naka ga sukimashita, O shitaku wo hayaku doka" (Honorable inside is empty. Please make preparations quickly.) "Kashikomarimashita" (All right, sir). She will bring a tray of tea things like that you see here now, with little rice cakes. Perhaps you will feel moved to say "Motto kudasai" (condescend to bring more); at all events, when you pay the modest bill and go away, it would be courteous to say "Oki-ni O sewa ni narimashita" (many thanks for the greatly honorable help you have given.)

The jinrikisha yonder is apparently bringing still another patron: those curious little two wheeled carriages are the favorite means of travel about Kyoto, or indeed any large Japanese town. The coolies who draw them charge about 20 sen (ten cents) per hour for ordinary running about, visiting, shopping, etc.

The building over there beyond the jinrikisha is the entrance gate to one of Kyoto's newest Shinto temples--the Tai Kyoku-den, built to commemorate the eleven hundredth anniversary (1895) of the founding of Kyoto.

From Notes of Travel, No. 9, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.


Drooping clusters of Wistaria over a tea-house. Kyoto, Japan.
Rameaux de wistaria au dessus d'une maison de thé Kyoto, Japon
Herabhängende Bündel der Wistaria über einem Teehaus, Kyoto, Japan.
Ramos de wistaria sobre una casa de té. Kyoto, Japón.
Wistaria-knippor strös öfver ett té-hus i Kioto, Japan.
Висящіе нучки Висторіи, надь чайнымъ домикомъ, Кіото Японія.