WATERING PLACES IN JAPAN. Thermal Stations as Fashionable as Any in the World.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 192, 19 February 1887, Page 3

WATERING PLACES IN JAPAN. Thermal Stations as Fashionable as Any in the World.

Invalids, tourists and. people in general would probably feel surprised were they told that watering-places exiet in the joyous land of the Mikado, where they form for the valetudinarian of that land of knickknacks, pagodae and brou^es a resort quite as fashionable us the European spas, with their inseparable health cureß aud fashionable promenades. Ikao is one of these thermal stations ; it is situated in the mountains, about seventy miles from Tokio, and poesesees springs of ferruginous and sulphurated water The Japanese rightly passes for the cleanest of heathens, and largely avails himself of the high temperature of the water by frequently taking warm baths. Here may be met in largo numbers functionaries, merchants, political characters, princes of the blood, and people of independent means, all fleeing for a time from the life of bustle and turmoil of the large towns ; this activity is largely due to the introduction of European commerce and fashion, which have inevitably brought with them competition, social activity and commercial and intellectual worry. This village of Ikao, built in a long line of picturesque and graceful looking houses lining both sides of a unique and steep street, conpit>ts» principally of hotels, which do not in any way respond to our idea of imposing and massive build ings ; they are simply frame houses containing several rooms, the outer and inner waHa of -which are hung with oiled paper, and the floors covered with woven dried grass mats. These dwellings being all in a line, the roof of each one is, on account of the steepness of the street, on a level of the ground floor of its neighbouring house, thus giving as it were at a distance the appearance of a huge staircase. Each house is provided with a small conduit of the warm mineral water taken from the torrent that thunders down into a ravine clos9 at hand. There are, besides, numerous public and private batha ; consequently the village resounds all day long with the shouting and laughing of the men, women and children who are bathing, either separate^ or promiscuously, in wooden pans three or four feet deep ; exclamations and various noises are accompanied by tho ceaeolesa sound of the rushing waters. In the interval of these ablutions and rubbings tho hosts of this aquatic locality wander about, clad, both sexes alike, in a light and ample cotton robe of various colours, girded at the waist with either a strip of satin or crape. Thov vary their exercise by frequenting the different teahoueoe, and while sipping innumerable and minute cups of tea or of sake (a sort of spirituous liquor) and smoking a few pinchep of mild tobacco out of very small-bowled pipes, they indulge in a game of chess or talk scandal, the whole proceedings being enlivened with music and dancing and tho performances of wandering mountebanks or tumblers. The Japanese, unlike most Orientals, are sturdy walkers ; hence they may be seen, singly or in groups, .dispersed over the sheltered I slope ot the mountain, climbing some rugged and flower-lined path, and protected from the eun's rays by huge and brilliant orange-coloured parasols. Sometimes they rest in rustic inns or teahouses, enjoying the panoramic perspectives, or chatting with the graceful girls, who constitute the cole attendants. Toward evening all the visitors and inhabitants generally congregate in the only street of the village ; there may be seen nobles with their coats of arms worked into the sleevea or back 3 ot their garments, merchants, Buddhist priests with their shaven crowns, dandies seeming quite out of place in this crowd, dressed in national costume, and groups of young girls with rich silken robes of glaring colours, their | magnificent tresses of raven hair, being elaborately dressed in upward folde. The chatter is ceaseless around tho source (all drink out of the single bamboo cup in use) ; then, after a short rest, tho inhabitants rotire to sleep on their mats, and thus concludes a day of the happy life they load in Ikao.