There's only one custom that has given me trouble so far. In Japan, you must change your shoes when you enter most places - schools, doctor offices, hotels, homes, cafeterias, nice restaurants, etc. If you don't bring along your own pair of 'indoor shoes' to change into, you often HAVE to wear a pair of communal slippers. If there aren't any communal shoes provided, you go barefoot. The communal shoes look old and rarely cleaned. They don't have any signs of fungi or anything, but it still grosses me out. How are people not getting warts????? Here's Justin puting his pair of communal shoes back. These are open-toed, but all the school ones are closed.
These are the shoe cubbies that were provided at the Kochi Castle. There weren't any communal shoes, so we went through the castle barefoot. I've never liked having dirty feet, so even being barefoot without an opportunity to wash my feet soon afterwards bothers me.
So I got a pair of indoor sandals to wear at school during the day. I thought I was covered and could kiss the communal shoes goodbye. I was wrong. All bathrooms in all of my schools have communal bathroom slippers that you switch into from your indoor shoes. The cafeteria at the high school is the same, and as I found out during an assembly today, so is the gymnasium. Here are the bathroom slippers (the girls get pink and the boys get blue ones).
My high school doesn't have hallways to connect the buildings, so we walk outside on paths to get to and from classrooms. During my first tour I ran back to get my outdoor shoes before we left the building onto one of these paths, but the teachers told me it was okay to wear my indoor shoes on the paths. So I think this custom has lasted out of tradition since it's clearly not about keeping dirt off of certain floors.
I've taken comfort in the fact that a Japanese friend of mine is also disgusted by the communal shoe phenomenon. She doesn't think they are cleaned, and when they are, it's probably just a wipe down. No sanitizers.
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