Shoes

I think that it is common knowledge that when in Japan, you take off your shoes when you enter a home, but that is just the beginning to the various "shoe rituals" here.

Let's start off with the basics: when you enter the home, you take off your shoes; simple. Where do you store them? There is usually a closet or cabinet to put your shoes in. Some houses even have shelves and shelves of shoes in their doorway. You never hear mothers complain in Japan that their kids track mud or dirt through the house because they all take off their shoes when they get home. It's drilled into them, even my 3 year-old stops in the doorway and sits on the little ledge waiting for someone to take his shoes off.

It is strange that this isn't done in America, where almost every house has wall-to-wall carpeting, a rarity in Japan. Think about it - most Japanese homes have hard wood floors and they take their shoes off; most American homes have carpeting (which is harder to clean and easier to stain) and yet they keep their shoes on, tracking all that dirt from the outside into their homes.

But that is only the beginning: You don't have to walk bare feet at home in Japan, people usually wear slippers. You remember that some rooms have tatami floors, right? Well, you have to take your slippers off to walk on them, only bare feet or socks are allowed on tatami. You got all of that? Good, because there's more.

Now you obviously can't go into the toilet with your house slippers on, you might pee on them or toilet water might splash on them somehow, I really don't know why, you just can't; so right inside of the toilet, there is another pair of slippers. You slip your feet out of your house slippers and into the toilet slippers, which is usually something that is easy to clean, like Crocs. So that's it, right? Wrong.

Since most apartments in Japan don't have dryers for their laundry, every apartment has a balcony where you can hang your clothes out to dry; but since the balcony can get dirty due to wind or rain, you can't go out there in your house slippers, so another pair of Croc-like slippers is left on the balcony for you to wear while out there. And that's it (at least, all that I know so far) for shoe etiquette in Japan.

In the US, I had one pair of sneakers and one pair of dress shoes; now that I have all these slippers, I feel like a freaking woman.