something less convincing about a girl trying to be a boy than the other way around though perhaps I have a somewhat built-in prejudice. But they just don't have the size to carry it off convincingly and it is equally distracting to have them sing contralto - just as it is when some female impersonator comes out in a booming baritone. But it was interesting nevertheless.

I got in my share of shopping with a pearl ring and necklace and a couple of brocade silk dresses only $10 US so I could hardly pass them up. Getting kind of fed up with the same faces in our tour group I just took off one day (Sunday) and went out to the Nat. Science Museum alone and then across the park to the Zoo and went through that. It was interesting to just be myself among the Japanese people and to be "on my own" as it were. Getting back to the hotel I managed to learn how to get around on the elevated with the help of the map and questions which were seldom understood but the finger on the map did the trick. You learn to communicate in various ingenious ways under these circumstances. A couple of days later my room mate and I assayed a trip clear across town by subway just to explore on our own. That too presented something of a challenge when you realize that there are no street signs and when you come up out of a subway you have no familiar land marks. We kind of felt like “Gretel and Gretel" (having left Hansel at home) after the birds ate up their careful trail of breadcrumbs. But it was fun doing it by ourselves. Tokyo is famous for its "sister boys" but we didn't go into that dis- trict. I also understand that one of the better known "actresses" on the Japanese TV is a male who dresses as a woman most of the time. But traveling as a woman and with a group I had no means of inquir- ing about him. It was not the sort of subject that a middle-aged lady would be interested in.

We took several trips to the outlying districts to see some of the beauties of the countryside which were considerable and coming back to Tokyo from one of these trips we rode the famous 130 mile an hour "bullet" train and believe me it moves. We watched one go through the station while waiting for ours. You wouldn't believe how fast a 12 car train could move past you a "here it comes there it goes" sort of thing. But I must say Japanese trains, even the slower ones and the subways and elevateds, are very smooth and not nearly as jerky and swaying at ours. Just another one of those things where the conceited American who thinks that the best of everything is in America has to admit he is wrong if he is honest.

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