At first, he entered the agricultural college in Cirencester to study agriculture, however he gave up this idea, knowing that the major agriculture of Britain was stock farming and the major grain was wheat, and that the studies of those things would be useless in Japan.
当初は農業を修めるつもりでサイレンシスター農学校に入るが、英国の農業は牧畜が中心で、穀物は麦で、勉強をしても帰国後役には立たないと気付き放棄した。