midday sun
But an incongruous interruption is quite in keeping with the taste of this country ; everywhere it is practised , in conversation , in music , even in painting ; a landscape painter , for instance , when he has finished a picture of mountains and crags , will not hesitate to draw , in the very middle of the sky , a circle , or a lozenge , or some kind of framework , within which he will represent anything incoherent and inappropriate : a bonze fanning himself , or a lady taking a cup of tea . Nothing is more thoroughly Japanese than such digressions , made without the slightest apropos . Moreover , if I roused my past memories , it was the better to force myself to notice the difference between that day of July last year , so peacefully spent amid surroundings familiar to me from my earliest infancy , and my present animated life passed in the midst of such a novel world . To-day , therefore , under the scorching midday sun , at two o'clock , three swift-footed djins dragged us at full speed -- Yves , Chrysantheme , and myself -- in Indian file , each in a little jolting cart , to the farther end of Nagasaki , and there deposited us at the foot of some gigantic steps that run straight up the mountain . These are the granite steps leading to the great temple of Osueva , wide enough to give access to a whole regiment ; they are as grand and imposing as any work of Babylon or Nineveh , and in complete contrast with all the finical surroundings . We climb up and up -- Chrysantheme listlessly , affecting fatigue , under her paper parasol painted with pink butterflies on a black ground . As we ascended , we passed under enormous monastic porticoes , also in granite of rude and primitive style .