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Their stockings are like mittens with a place for the toe, and they would no more think of stepping on the mats with their shoes on than you would of getting into bed with your shoes on.
There are no chairs in a Japanese house, for the Japanese sit on the floor. For us it is very uncomfortable to sit on the floor for any length of time, but the Japanese prefer it, and I have seen them squatting on the floor in railway stations, although there were benches to sit on right alongside. I don’t know why, but I’ve often seen American girls sit on chairs with their feet up under them as if they were sitting on the floor. But I’ve never seen boys do it. Perhaps girls are part Japanese. The tables in a Japanese house have legs only a few inches high; they are really only trays like the bed trays we use when one is sick, and mealsare served by placing such a tray in front of each person as he squats on his heels on the floor. There are no beds either; they sleep on the mats and cover themselves with a padded kimono for a comforter and use a hard wooden block for a pillow.
The Japanese are like elephants. In what way? I’ll give you three guesses. They bathe frequently. The Chinese, who seldom bathe, say the Japanese must be very dirty to need so many baths. But what seems to us peculiar, all the family, one after another, bathe in the same tub without changing the water. The tub is shaped like a sawed-off barrel in which there is room to sit but not to lie down. The water is piping hot “to open the pores.” After the bather has parboiled himself, he then climbs out and scrubs himself.
