In our home, all has the appearance of a Japanese picture: we have
nothing but little folding-screens, little curiously shaped stools
bearing vases full of nosegays, and at the further end of the
apartment, in a nook forming an altar, a large gilded Buddha sits
enthroned in a lotus.
The house is just as I had fancied it should be in the many dreams of
Japan I had made before my arrival, during my long night watches:
perched on high, in a peaceful suburb, in the midst of green
gardens;--made up of paper panels, and taken to pieces according to
one's fancy, like a child's toy. Whole families of cicalas chirp day
and night under our old resounding roof. From our verandah, we have a
bewildering bird's-eye view of Nagasaki, of its streets, its junks and
its great pagodas, which, at certain hours, is lit up at our feet like
some fairylike scene.