Crossword-Solution: YAMAGATA 8 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 14

Prosperity—Convict Labour—A New Bridge—Yamagata—Intoxicating Forgeries—The Government Buildings—Bad Manners—Snow Mountains—A Wretched Town.

Yamagata _ken_ impresses me as being singularly prosperous, progressive, and go-ahead; the plain of Yamagata, which I entered soon after leaving Kaminoyama, is populous and highly cultivated, and the broad road, with its enormous traffic, looks wealthy and civilised.

Yamagata, a thriving town of 21,000 people and the capital of the _ken_, is well situated on a slight eminence, and this and the dominant position of the _kenchô_ at the top of the main street give it an emphasis unusual in Japanese towns.

The streets of Yamagata are broad and clean, and it has good shops, among which are long rows selling nothing but ornamental iron kettles and ornamental brasswork.

Once or twice I have found fault with Ito’s manners, and he has asked me twice since if I think them like the manners of the policemen at Yamagata! North of Yamagata the plain widens, and fine longitudinal ranges capped with snow mountains on the one side, and broken ranges with lateral spurs on the other, enclose as cheerful and pleasant a region as one would wish to see, with many pleasant villages on the lower slopes of the hills.