I was wet and tired, and the woman at the one wretched yadoya met me, saying, "I'm sorry it's very dirty and quite unfit for so honourable a guest;" and she was right, for the one room was up a ladder, the windows were in tatters, there was no charcoal for a hibachi, no eggs, and the rice was so dirty and so full of a small black seed as to be unfit to eat.
"Unbeaten-Tracks-in-Japan"
Bird, Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy)
I could not ride, so I tramped on foot for some miles under an avenue of pines, through water a foot deep, and, with my paper waterproof soaked through, reached Toyoka half drowned and very cold, to shiver over a hibachi in a clean loft, hung with my dripping clothes, which had to be put on wet the next day.
"Unbeaten-Tracks-in-Japan"
Bird, Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy)
To keep warm in cold weather the Japanese hug to themselves and hang over smaller stoves, called hibachi, metal vessels containing a handful of smouldering charcoal.
"Peeps at Many Lands: Japan"
John Finnemore