Slippers

One of my favorite customs in Japan is wearing slippers. When going into anyone’s house you leave your 土足 (dosoku-“outside shoes” or literally “dirt feet/legs”) at the door, and put on some slippers. Many homes in Japan have a pair of slippers in the bathroom (so when you reaaaaaaalllly gotta pee, you CAN’T go; you gotta suck it in until you change your slippers). When you check into a hotel (business or love), there are presumably cleaned slippers waiting for you just inside your door. If you go into most Japanese style restaurants here, as opposed to the 50% of western style restaurants, you put your shoes in a little locker at the door and you put on some guest slippers. If you come to my house, you damn well better at LEAST take your shoes off, even if you don't want the slippers.

If you go inside a temple, of COURSE you have to switch into guest slippers. And the best part over all, when I go to work, yep, I stop at the doorway of my school, reach into my locker and put on my (own personal pair of) slippers.

When in public places, after you have lived in Japan for a while you never stop to think about how many old farts or young, unshowered teenagers have had their smelly, fuming feet in the slippers you are now wearing. After a while, when you go to your friends houses, you no longer think, "Well, I hope she is over her Athlete’s Foot". It just seems cleaner to change from your mud/dirt/dust filled outside shoes to something more comfortable, so you are happy to do so.

After you get accustomed to them though, slippers can do strange things to your mind via mental association. You start to feel a need for them. You start to feel naked without them. I also tried having a separate pair of slippers in the bathroom, but I realized it made me feel like my bathroom floor was crawling with disease. I was scared to touch it barefooted even though I clean it at least once a year. I had never felt that way before; I had never feared my bathroom no matter how bad it smelled. I did away with the RUBBER bathroom slippers (they were SPLASH proof mind you) realizing that it was causing my newfound bathroom anguish. I did however keep my other pair of territorially confined shoes, on the balcony. You must have a pair of slippers on your balcony to hang up your clothes. THAT concept is also a little strange if you think about it too. If the slippers stay outside on the balcony 100% of their life (as well they are supposed to), they are exactly as germ covered and smothered in bird/bat shit as the rest of the balcony. At least they keep your feet from being cold in the winter.

I am not alone in feeling trapped in my own house by my foot coverings. I had one roommate in Springfield, Missouri named Kuni that would switch slippers to go from the main part of the apartment down to the basement. I would expect that most of the rest of Japan feels the same way, which is why I was baffled last month when I went to visit my friend.

Of all the places I have been in Japan, the hotels, temples, restaurants, friends’ houses, even WORK, the only place I was not able to take of my shoes was at a hospital. One of my best friends had surgery on her knee as a result of a car wreck. I went to visit her in the hospital in Osaka, and was really confused when I walked in and found no place to take off my shoes. It felt really wrong to walk in, go straight to the elevator with my shoes still teeming with the outside world’s germs, and walk down the hall past the rooms of many sick people spreading bacteria and allergens with every step. Why is it that in the ONE place that is supposed to be the CLEANEST PLACE ON EARTH, isn’t as clean as possible in Japan? With the insistence on removing your shoes, even when I go to the GYM, it is amazing that the place where people are weakest and most susceptible to having their conditions deteriorate doesn't follow this basic etiquette. When I ask my Japanese friends about this, most of them just shrug in amazement after they realize how strange it is. One friend tried to suggest that some floors are just so clean that they don't get dirty. Perhaps there are magic hospital flooring materials that prevent the floors from ever being hospitable to any germs that want to move in. I'm not sure but I have a plan to fix it.

The next time I have to visit a friend in the hospital, I am taking a huge bottle of water with me. If it isn’t raining, I will use the water I brought along to create a very thick mud puddle, dance in it for about ten minutes and then stroll in with a swagger; resoiling the entire path from the front door to my friend’s room. After the doctors, nurses and janitors feel the horror and clean up after my brilliance, the first thing they will do is install a proper slipper exchange. I don't plan on doing this at every hospital in the country, but I'm sure that this oddity of Japan will correct itself after the news of my guerilla attack on its illogic spreads…like a plague.

Mine!
Erich von Meatleg