But while one is still seanning the programmes comes the inviter ton to go into the tea room, where narrow, bench like tables "are placed in rows, across and on the sides of the "room, with sto ranged behind them. Late-comers are given cushions, placed on the floor. Enter a row of the most adorable little Japanese maidens mable, exquisitely kimono-ed, their hair elaborately coifed. 'They are but eight or ten years old, in training as geishas, and they twinkle and dimple irrepressibly at the foreigners' efforts to respond to their deep bows. They collect the tickets and place before each guest the "nko machi" or rices cakes, a preventative of illness Guringe the year, three round cakes, decorated in colours and garnished with artificial maple leaves.
An older geisha then enters, and at the little shrine prepares with all due ceremony the tea, which is whipped till it is literally the green froth of liquid jade." This is Indled into shallow narrow be and brought to the guests, who sip it gravely. The bowls are taken away by. the same diminutive damecle, The foreigners, copying the Japanese, wrap up their rice cakes in the paper napkin provided, and are ushered out, along core idols and over connecting bridges, to another waiting room, more truely Japanese, warmed by huge hibachi. Some time glides past Flacidly here. Cigarettes are smok-come of the older Japanese ladies smoke their tiny pipes, and then we are conducted by more corridors to the dance hall itself where pewelike seats are provided in a sloping gallery. Below us, in a railed off portion of the floor, are the second class seats, whi are soon filled. After a period of waiting a distant roar is heard, and the eager mob, like stampeded cattle, rushes into' the unreserved ficer space, fathers dragging a couple of children with them and mothers galloping along with babies bumping about on their backs, In no time at all the floor s crowded,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.