My dear Mother,

I was very pleased to get your letter of 13 December yesterday. Along with it came "The Watsonian" and a couple of "Nations" for which many thanks, also the destroyed IOU. I was glad to hear you were all well save for Margaret's neuralgia which I hope has ceased troubling her long ere now.

Since writing you last week, I have had a look at your Income Tax papers but as I was out last night I did not complete the statement of dividends etc. I'll finish this weekend and post it next week to you so that you should have no trouble completing your claim for repayment of Income Tax which I think you usually make at the beginning of March.

Last Sunday Shioya Country Club's new premises were opened. It used to occupy a site right on the shore but about five days after my arrival it was burnt down during the night and there was nothing left standing but the chimneys which rise like pillars amongst the ashes. That is the worst of the wooden premises here. There are quite a lot of the bungalow type and there is no putting out a fire when it starts.

The Club Committee have temporarily leased a big house on the hillside as a makeshift club. Really it is a far finer building than the old club and has very fine grounds and a glorious view over the Inland Sea with its encircling hills and wooded islands. It is well furnished and has a billiard room, a library and card room. After the earthquake our company (the Rising Sun Petroleum Company) rented it as temporary quarters for the Yokohama office staff but as they gradually fixed up quarters for themselves it was given up. It was an expensive item as we paid over £100 per month for it. Rents here are stiff. For our mess house at Shioya we pay nearly £150 a year in rent alone.

I like the country round here. It is very pretty with the wooded hills and the sea which is more like a huge loch because you can see the land in every direction, though there are of course breaks here and there leading between the islands to the open sea. One gets lovely sun-rises and sun-sets against the hills - bright red sky with everything else black or pale grey.

On Saturday (17 January) I was at a Japanese dinner in Osaka. The Osaka Benzine Guild had sent an invitation to the company and Gooding asked if I should care to go. One of the sales side, a fellow, Woolley by name, went also.

Osaka is about 40 minutes by train from Kobe and is a big manufacturing town. The dinner began at 7 and we were met at the station and taken by car to the restaurant where the dinner was held.

We went into a little courtyard in front of the main entrance and took off our shoes there. Then stepped onto matting inside where we got rid of our coats, hats etc. A geisha girl led us up the stairs in our stocking soles to a large hall or room all floored with straw or grass matting round which were ranged little square mattresses or cushions about a yard square. Between each of these was a lovely large earthenware bowl filled with hot ashes in the centre of which was glowing charcoal. There were no tables and no chairs and the only decorations apart from the wooden screens and walls was a stunted fir in a handsome bowl and a sort of statuette of a man in armour. We were the only European guests although some of the Japanese were in European garb. We squatted down tailor fashion and shortly afterwards a number of geisha came in carrying cups of tea. They went round to each guest, knelt (they seem to subside onto their knees without an effort) down before him and bowed, nearly touching the ground with their heads, three times and then gave you a cup of tea - their china tea without sugar. The cups, which were as delicate as eggshells, had no handles. After that they disappeared and came back with presents for us in the shape of neat wooden boxes with little supports at the corners filled with iced cakes or some sweet stuff. We sell two kinds of petrol here - Shell and "anchor" and there were three cakes in one row with a pink shell on a green ground in icing. Then a thick block of a sort of sweet or cake made from "soya" beans I believe - it looked like very dark and firm calfsfoot jelly but on cutting it it was more of a marzipan consistency. Then a row of three iced cakes - white anchors on a red ground. The whole thing would be about one foot square. After that, little lacquer tables were brought in by the geishas. Again they knelt down and bowed and then slipped the table over the box with the cakes, which fitted under it exactly. They were not tables in our sense of the word but rather trays with a support running along the two ends raising them about 6 inches from the ground.

On each of the trays was a pair of chopsticks, a bowl of soup and a little cup - smaller than those little things (the smallest ones) which fit one inside the other on the table in the drawing room. This was for saké.

Again the geishas came in, this time each carrying a little metal kettle. Again they knelt and this time we had to hold out our little cups and get them filled with saké piping hot. It tasted like hot sherry, but one can drink a great deal of it without it affecting one.

This letter must stop as the mail closes in an hour. I was to have sent it last Friday via Siberia but heard that it would be quicker to keep it. Hence the addition today to it. I'll give you the rest of the news of the dinner in my next letter.

Love from your son, Willie.

My Dear Mother,

Many thanks for your letter of 25th December which I safely received last week, also the letter from Siebert and "The Nation".

I was glad to get all your news about Xmas and to hear that Margaret was keeping better and that Penarth was agreeing with her.

We are still having fine weather here which to judge by the papers was not the case at home at the time at which you were writing. When I say fine, I mean not merely dry but bright sunny frosty weather with very little wind. Last week we had some snow - one morning everything was white with about an inch of it but it soon disappeared save on the hills and every place is dry again.

Did I tell you I had started to take some Japanese lessons? An hour twice a week (on Mondays and Wednesdays) after office. My teacher is Oito San - otherwise Mr Oito, for "San" means "Mr" and you use it in every imaginable sort of way. You want your cook but you ask for Mr Cook. You want a messenger or boy - you ask for "Boy San". You want the dog (we have a lovely retriever called Bix at the mess) and you ask for "Bix San". Like a lot of things in Japan it is backside forwards - not really "Mr Cook" but "Cook Mr" and it is much the same with the rest of the language. Here is an example. In English you say "Was your dog in the house?" but in Japanese you say "You of, dog, house of, interior in, was?" So you can imagine that I am not making particularly rapid progress. It very different from most European languages, but if I can learn enough to get about with I shall be quite pleased as one really does not feel the lack of it in Kobe. In fact I can get on here more easily than I could at first in Lisbon. There people did not speak English. Here a great many do. Notices in railway stations, at Post Offices, and in a lot of other places are in English as well as Japanese, whilst we have about 50 British on our staff at the office quite apart from Japanese who can speak our language. On the other hand if one is shopping or wants to ask a question in the street or anything like that it is very useful to know a little. Another advantage is that the Company pay for my lessons. I get two a week for 22 yen per month, so instead of myself forking out 5/- a lesson I get off scot free.

I was telling you in one of my letters about a Japanese dinner I was at but I had not time to give you all the news about it. My efforts with chopsticks were very discreet. There is one blessing - you can lift up the plates or rather little porcelain bowls in which nearly everything is served. You hold the bowl in one hand and your chopsticks in the other so that by lifting the bowl a little nearer your mouth than is correct you can manage to get the grub to its proper destination with considerably less risk than I at first anticipated. The geishas were very tickled by my performance and brought me a fork but it was not much use for the grub as it was two-pronged like our one for fruit or buffet. Whilst the meal was proceeding one drank innumerable thimble-fuls of sake, for one sip would empty the little cup. The geishas kept changing their little kettles for fresh ones with hot sake because it is always supposed to be drunk hot. Instead of drinking healths as we do, the Japanese give you their sake cup. Your geisha fills it up and you drink to them and then pass back the little cup after rinsing it in a little bowl of water. It was very funny the way all sorts of guests would come over to us, subside on their knees, then bow to us, putting the palms of their hands on the floor on either side of them as they did it. I had read in some book of a Japanese squatting on the ground like a large frog. When I saw it actually the truth of the description absolutely forced itself on me.

At intervals throughout the meal some of the geishas danced, whilst about a dozen others played an accompaniment on their queer sort of fiddle arrangement. When there was to be one of these interludes in the meal, those who were to play squatted at one end of the room and those who were to dance lined up in front whilst three or four at the end of the row supplied the words.

The dancing is quite different from our ideas of such and is really more or less incomprehensible to us unless one understands Japanese because it is supposed to illustrate the story which the singers are singing. A lot of it is more like dumb acting because the dancers never open their mouths. In fact I should get rather bored with much of it, I think, not knowing what it is all about. It is largely posturing as the Japanese kimonos etc are certainly not adaptable for anything else - least of all for stage dancing as we know it.

Just before the finish of the meal the geishas brought each guest a large flat cardboard box with a sort of handkerchief in it. They then took our box with the cakes I told you about, this case with the handkerchief, and another square wooden box with a collection in it such as you might see on the cold buffet at a hotel or in Glasons window in Princes Street. Mine contained a large crayfish ornamented with vegetables carved to represent roses and flowers, smoked eel, some kind of dried fish, and various other things. It had been put down beside me in the first stages of the meal but is not supposed to be touched. All these things were tied up in a large coloured cotton handkerchief and handed to me along with my coat etc. Such was my first Japanese dinner.

Well Mother, no more news just now.

With much love, your son Willie.

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