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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. 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 ofpaper and the floors are covered with straw mats. The mats are not made to fit the floor, but the floors aremade 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, andwalk about the house in their stocking feet.
