Live from Japan!

First of all, I must apologize for the lack of pictures in the post. For right now we are either stealing internet (we have found a magic wireless hotspot in our apartment) or writing from work, so uploading pictures isn’t an option for now. Sorry folks. We should have our own internet set up in our apartment within a couple weeks. And we promise we will have many photos to share then.

 Without photos, I will try to be extra witty. Relaying fun and interesting stories about my new, bizarre life in Japan.

My story for you today involves a unique custom in Japan. Before we came we were advised to bring along indoor shoes for our school. In Japan, shoes are not worn inside schools, homes or most restaurants. Basically, any place that you will be staying for awhile.

As a result, people have indoor shoes. At home these might be slippers. In restaurants you usually go bare foot. And at school, teachers wear these clunky plastic slip-on sandals. When you arrive at school you put your outside shoes into your locker and put your inside shoes on. Today, something crazy happened, my indoor shoes went outside.

Several teachers were taking me out to lunch today. Takano-sensei (my supervisor), Wakai-sensei, and Hayashi-sensei. (Sensei is the Japanese word for teacher, it is used instead of Mr. or Mrs.) The parking lot is behind school, on the opposite side from where our shoe lockers were. I was following the three teachers when we got to the back door of the school, about ready to exit for the parking lot. I looked down at the other teachers feet, they were all wearing their indoor shoes and so was I.

I stopped and asked Takano-sensei what I should do (she was the only teacher among us that could speak English). She gave a little chuckle and said, “It’s very rude, to take shoes outside. But, parking lot is very far from locker. It’ll be fine.” And with that, my inside shoes made their way to the parking lot. We drove to the restaurant where I, ironically, had to take my shoes off before entering.