Wednesday, April 4 2007
Mood:
According to the japanese tradition there are places where only shoes, sandals or socks are allowed. Generally, the shoes are used mostly for outdoors and public places (department stores, malls, train stations, offices, etc.). In more private places special sandals or shoes are used. These are usually provided by the owner or previously allocated by the visitors themselves. Examples of these are the schools (the students have special shoes that are used only inside the school), hospitals, sport centers, etc. There are also places where no kind of footwear is accepted; examples of these are buddhist and shintoist temples, traditional japanese restaurants, tea houses and in general any place that furnishes the traditional japanese flooring (called tatami). In these places, the most recommendable action is to wear white socks, clean and without holes.
In the places where is necessary to remove your shoes there is usually a shoe box and sandals for the visitors (except in the previously mentioned places where no footwear is acceptable, there only a shoe box might be found).
Commonly the visitors leave their shoes in the entrance and the host or hostess places the shoes into the shoe box. When the visitors are leaving the building, the host or hostess places the shoes back in the entrance pointing towards the exit to make the shoe fitting easier. In more familiar environments, like when visiting a friend, the most common course of action is just for the visitors to leave their shoes at the entrance and proceed inside without any of the previous formalities.
See Category: Japan
Permalink
del.icio.us 
Digg 
Spurl 
BlinkList 
Furl 
Reddit 
Fark 
Yahoo
