of the minor luxuries which go to make life pleasant. The clubs, too, are very comfortable.

Most of the usual sports are indulged in freely, with the exception of polo, and there are occasional pony races, though these are not up to the standard of those one comes across in many other parts of the Far East. There is no hunting, very little shooting is obtainable now, and good fishing is also scarce, but the yachting and boating are excellent.

As, however, I am not writing a treaty-port guidebook, I do not propose to deal at greater length with the stereotyped resorts of the tourist, my object in this chapter being to point out to the foreigner, in view of the forthcoming opening up of the country, a few of the features of travel and accommodation which go to make up the conditions with which he is likely to meet in travelling about Japan proper, more or less on his own account, at the present day.

It is usually maintained, and very rightly so, that to acquire a knowledge of the Japanese language, even moderately well, is a question of many years of hard study. It is true that one learned author stated that he had accomplished this task after a few months' application, but I cannot for the life of me understand how he did it.

The ordinary person finds the study not only an extremely laborious and lengthy task, but one which, when entered upon seriously, has a faculty for absorbing, or rather blotting out, all other questions for the time being.

But between mastering the Japanese language, in the proper sense of the word, and acquiring a sort of jargon, which can be perfectly well understood for the purposes of the ordinary requirements of life, there is a very wide difference; and there is no reason why any person of ordinary intelligence should not, without any great effort, accomplish the latter feat in two or three months from his arrival.

In undergoing the process, however, he must be prepared to remain out of touch with Europeans, or nearly so, and to run the risk of being considerably bored at times.

The easiest method of acquiring this sort of practical smattering of Japanese is to begin by learning that simple and comparatively modern form of writing known as Katakana, which is, in fact, a phonetic alphabet, or syllabary, containing just under fifty characters. This is easily accomplished, and a knowledge of it will enable one to grasp the way in which Japanese words are built up, thereby not only materially assisting the memory with regard to words and phrases, but robbing the Anglo-Japanese phrasebook, which one purchases in the ordinary course, of most of its terrors.

When one glances at such a book for the first time, and learns that the shortest way of saying "I" in respectable Japanese is "Watakushi wa," and that to change that simple pronoun into the plural "we" it is necessary to add two more syllables to the above five, the embryo student may well be excused for standing aghast at the appalling nature of the

task he had thought of setting himself, and, indeed, for turning tail then and there.

If he masters Katakana, however, he will see that a great deal of the length of the words in his book is due to the fact that we are obliged, when trying to convey their sound by Roman characters, to use a great many letters.

The nature of the practical smattering of Japanese that one may learn in the manner above explained will, of course, not be correct, not even at all grammatical; but it will suffice for the requirements of the man who is feeling his way in the interior, and he will improve as he goes. The Japanese are wonderfully quick at grasping a foreigner's meaning, as long as he says his say quietly and does not bully them. If he strings together a number of the substantives which should have a place in his sentence, and applies somewhere or other the required verb, preferably in its root form, and if his pronunciation is within a thousand miles of what it should be, he will be able to make himself understood as a rule. The least sign, however, of blustering or of losing his temper will spoil the situation, and he may rave to any extent he likes to no purpose whatever.

Assuming that a foreigner possessed of the above amount of knowledge of the Japanese language, accompanied by a boy who does not understand Eng lish, and armed with his passport, should set out on his travels in the interior, he need have no very serious trouble in finding his way about, as long as he is in no particular hurry.