Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan | Page 4

of loyalty to my own fancy. I like to think that Xenophon felt as much in his Anabasis, though but one book out of seven deals with the going up, the other six being occupied with the getting safely away again. It is not told that Xenophon regretted his adventure. Certainly I am not sorry I was wedded to my idea.
To most of my acquaintance Noto was scarcely so much as a name, and its local habitation was purely cartographic. I found but one man who had been there, and he had dropped down upon it, by way of harbor, from a boat. Some sympathetic souls, however, went so far toward it as to ask where it was.
To the westward of Tokyo, so far west that the setting sun no longer seems to lose itself among the mountains, but plunges for good and all straight into the shining Nirvana of the sea, a strangely shaped promontory makes out from the land. It is the province of Noto, standing alone in peninsular isolation.
It was partly in this position that the fascination lay. Withdrawn from its fellows, with its back to the land, it faced the glory of the western sky, as if in virginal vision gazing out upon the deep. Doubly withdrawn is it, for that the coast from which it stands apart is itself almost unvisited by Europeans,--an out-of-the-world state, in marked contrast to the shore bordering the Pacific, which is now a curbstone on the great waterway round the earth, and incidentally makes a happy parenthesis of promenade for the hasty globe-trotter. The form, too, of the peninsula came in for a share in its attraction. Its coast line was so coquettishly irregular. If it turned its back on the land, it stretched its hands out to the sea, only to withdraw them again the next moment,--a double invitation. Indeed, there is no happier linking of land to water. The navigator in such parts becomes himself a delightfully amphibious creature, at home in both elements. Should he tire of the one, he can always take to the other. Besides, such features in a coast suggest a certain clean-cut character of profile,--a promise, in Japan at least, rarely unkept.
To reach this topographically charming province, the main island had to be crossed at its widest, and, owing to lofty mountain chains, much tacking to be done to boot. Atmospherically the distance is even greater than afoot. Indeed, the change in climate is like a change in zone; for the trend of the main island at this point, being nearly east and west, gives to the one coast a southerly exposure, and to the other a northerly one, while the highest wall of peaks in Japan, the Hida-Shinshiu range, shuts off most meteorological communication. Long after Tokyo is basking in spring, the west coast still lies buried in deep drifts of snow.
It was my misfortune to go to this out-of-the-way spot alone. I was duly sensible of my commiserable state at times. Indeed, in those strange flashes of dual consciousness when a man sees his own condition as if it were another's, I pitied myself right heartily; for I hold that travel is like life in this, at least, that a congenial companion divides the troubles and doubles the joys. To please one's self is so much harder than to be pleased by another; and when it comes to doubt and difficulty, there are drawbacks to being one's own guide, philosopher, and friend. The treatment is too homoeopathic by half.
An excuse for a companion existed in the person of my Japanese boy, or cook. He had been boy to me years before; and on this return of his former master to the land of the enlightened, he had come back to his allegiance, promoting himself to the post of cook. During the journey he acted in both capacities indifferently,--in one sense, not in the other. In addition to being capable he was willing and of great endurance. Besides, he was passionately fond of travel.
He knew no more about Noto than I, and at times, on the road, he could not make out what the country folk said, for the difference in dialect; which lack of special qualification much increased his charm as a fellow-traveler. He neither spoke nor understood English, of course, and surprised me, after surprising himself, on the last day but one of our trip, by coming out with the words "all right." His surname, appropriately enough, meant mountain-rice-field, and his last name --which we should call his first name--was Yejiro, or lucky-younger-son. Besides cooking excellently well, he made paper plum blossoms beautifully, and once constructed a string telephone out of his own head. I mention these samples of accomplishment to show that he was no mere dabbler in pots