Читать книгу Broken Butterflies онлайн

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Though he had halfway expected this, he was disappointed. Karsten read his thought.

"Yokohama always disappoints, doesn't it? I shall never forget my shock when I first came to the Fabled Orient and found this nondescript changeling of a city. Tokyo is becoming spoiled, too. They are covering it with electric poles, tangles of wires, atrocious buildings, all the dreariness of civilization, which they have a positive genius for making as obtrusive as possible. It seems almost that when they copy our civilization they make a point of making the worst parts thereof the most conspicuous. They can endow them with a hideousness which you don't find in any other place in the world. Still, Tokyo is not as bad as Yokohama. You may still find large quarters which are Japan. I have found such a place. I hope you will like it."

They arrived at Karsten's house late in the afternoon. Hugh felt his hopes rise as they left the prosy, noisy main streets and their rickshaws began a tortuous journey through narrow alleys, through a typically Japanese quarter, with clean wooden houses, latticed paper windows, grilled entrances, bamboo fences, and daintily contrived roofed gates through which might be glimpsed miniature gardens, with dwarfed pines, stone lanterns, curved paths of broad gray stones.