双语+MP3|美国学生世界地理60 风景明信片

     WHEN I came home from Japan I sent picture post-cards to all the Japanese school-boys who had given me their names. I had chosen cards that I thought would give them some idea of the size and importance of our country. One card had a picture of the Capitol at Washington, another Niagara Falls, another sky-scrapers in New York. In reply each boy wrote me a letter on thin rice paper and drew or painted or inclosed a picture of some scene or common sight in Japan.
     Three of the pictures were of the same thing-a beautiful mountain with a snow-white top. It is the sacred mountain of Japan, called Fujiyama or just Fuji. It is really not a mountain at all but a burnt-out volcano, the top of which is covered with snow. You can see it from afar, and the Japanese love it so they put pictures of it on every conceivable thing they want to ornament-on fans, boxes, trays, umbrellas, lanterns, screens. No movie queen or famous beauty has ever had as many pictures made of her as have been made of Fuji.

     There were two pictures of a huge bronze statue of Buddha seated out-of-doors in a grove of trees. It is so large that half a dozen people can sit on its thumbs. The eyes are of solid gold and more than a yard long, and in its forehead is a large ball of solid silver. They call it the Diabutsu. We might call it an idol, but the Japanese make statues of Buddha as we put up monuments to famous men and saints, and their statues of Buddha are to remind them that he was wise and good. His life was an example which even Christians might imitate.
     Here are some of the other pictures which the Japanese boys sent me:


　　A street scene in Tokyo
     Tokyo is the capital and largest city of Japan and one of the largest cities i. t. w. W. The old capital has exactly the same letters as Tokyo but arranged this way: Kyoto. If you say Tokyo twice you say Kyoto too-TO/KYOTO/KYO. Both Tokyo and Kyoto and all other Japanese cities look quite different from our large cities. There are no sky-scrapers, few buildings are more than two stories high, and most of them are built of bamboo. The reason for this is because the sea-serpent is still shaking himself almost every day, and they have so many earthquakes in these islands that tall houses would be shaken down. When an earthquake does come-and slight ones come almost every day and terrific ones every once in a while-the houses can easily be built up again. The chief damage done by the earthquakes, however, is the result of fires started when lights and stoves are upset. Then thousands of houses may be destroyed.


     There are a few big buildings that are built to withstand earthquakes. They are built on underground platforms of concrete instead of on the solid rock of the earth. This keeps them from being torn from their foundations when an earthquake shakes the ground; just as a big loose rock lying on the ground might be shaken but would not be broken apart.


　　A picture of a Japanese house
     Japanese houses make fine bonfires, for they are not only made entirely of wood, but the windows are made of paper and the floors are covered with straw mats. The mats are not made to fit the floor, but the floors are made to fit the mats, which are all of the same size. The rooms are built to fit six mats, ten mats, and so on. In order to keep the mats clean, the Japanese take off their shoes whenever they enter their houses, and walk about the house in their stocking feet. 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 meals are 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.


　　A picture of two Japanese carrying a big bucket on a pole which rests on their shoulders
     In the tub-I couldn't see them but I knew-there are live fish. The Japanese eat little meat, because they have few animals such as cows, sheep, or pigs from which meat is made, and because good Buddhists do not believe in eating meat anyway. But fish they do not call meat, and they catch and eat more fish than any other people in the World, even more than the people in Norway. As Japan is all islands, no one lives far from the sea, and fresh fish may be had all the time. Peddlers carry them alive in tubs of water so that the fish will be absolutely fresh.

　　A picture of fields covered with water in which is growing rice
     Rice is the chief and almost the only vegetable in Japan, and tea is the chief drink. Tea the Japanese drink without either sugar or cream. There are tea-houses and tea-gardens where waitresses called Geisha girls serve tea to customers and then entertain them by dancing and playing on long-necked musical instruments something like a banjo.
     Another letter was ornamented with high wooden gateways called Torii, which you see everywhere in Japan, standing sometimes alone, sometimes in line. Torii means a bird rest. They are sacred gateways under which one passes to a temple or shrine.
     Still another letter was illustrated with pictures of large stone lanterns such as you often see around Japanese temples and in their gardens. These lanterns give very little light, but they are much more ornamental than our lanterns, and the Japanese think more of beauty than they do of use. They even have a festival of lanterns-the paper kind that we use at garden parties.
     Another letter contained a picture of three monkeys carved in wood in the greatest of all Japanese temples at Nikko. One monkey had his paws over his ears, the next over his mouth, and the third over his eyes, meaning: "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil."

　　A picture of two very fat men squatting on the ground and facing each other in the center of a huge building around which are sitting thousands of people watching
     The two fat men are wrestlers. Wrestling is a national sport in Japan, as bull-fighting is a national sport in Spain and football is a national sport in the United States. There are two kinds of wrestling. One kind is done by giants weighing several hundred pounds, who wrestle before crowds such as gather to watch baseball or football games in this country. The wrestlers squat, facing each other like huge bullfrogs, and spend most of their time in this position, each watching for a chance to get a grip on the other. The game seems to an American simply one of watching and waiting, for once one gets "a hold" on the other the battle is usually over. Another kind of wrestling is called Jiu-jitsu. It is a trick wrestling, and a little chap, if he knows how, can throw a much larger and stronger person by catching his arm, hand, or leg and twisting it with a quick movement into certain positions that make it impossible for him to resist. I have seen in Japan whole schools lined up two and two, practising the various "throws" with lightning-like movements.
     Wrestling is an old Japanese sport. The Japanese, however, copied new sports from other countries along with all the other things they copied. They copied baseball, and crowds at baseball games in Japan are as big as baseball crowds in the United States.
     The last letter inclosed a photograph of the Emperor. Many countries have now changed from emperors to presidents but Japan, which has been quick to change in most things, I don't believe ever will change to a president. The same family has been ruling in Japan for two thousand years. Even after being beaten in World War II, the Japanese were allowed by the other countries to keep their Emperor. Before this war the Japanese believed the Emperor was sacred as if he were a god. They still treat him with great respect but are no longer supposed to worship him.