This wonderful book is a collection of letters written by a 49-year-old British woman who was the first foreigner to visit, and document, much of rural Japan in the late 1870’s. Told to leave England and travel to “improve her health”, she used this excuse to have adventures all over, in the Rocky Mountains, Hawaii, Tibet, Morocco, and many other places, including (the subject of this book) Japan. She bravely and deliberately tackled the least known, obscure, badly repaired “unbeaten tracks” to quench her thirst for exploration and knowledge. She didn’t even speak Japanese in the beginning, and so worked through a guide/interpreter she hired in Tokyo. Her descriptions of the land she traveled through, the hardships of her trip, and how rural Japanese lived make for fascinating reading. She also spent several months on the northern island of Hokkaido, visiting and interviewing the Aino, an indigenous people unrelated to the Japanese (she notes that they have European, not Asian, facial features, which is interesting). I hope that when I reach her age, I can retain just as much adventurous spirit as she did.