Kindly Remove Your Shoes

The worldwide perception that the Japanese remove their shoes to go inside is absolutely accurate. In fact, it's taken rather seriously here. Case in point...it's in our lease that we remove our shoes before going in our house. Overkill? Perhaps, but only when viewed through "American flag colored glasses".
 

This photo is from our day trip to Nara in April. Visitors had to remove their shoes before entering the temple.

In order to better understand the shoe removal customs in the land of the rising sun, let's first learn a bit about Japanese houses. Traditional Japanese homes contain tatami rooms, which are covered with woven rice straw tatami mats and are multipurpose in function. A family would put out a table and eat in this room and subsequently pull out their futon mattresses and sleep in the same place. So how would you ensure that a room with so many uses remains clean enough to sleep on at night? For starters, you take off your shoes! In order to maintain cleanliness, shoes worn outside are traded for house slippers when entering the home. Similarly, house slippers are exchanged for toilet slippers to be worn only in the bathroom (most hotels we've stayed in provide toilet slippers in the bathroom). The OCD in one of us (ahem...guess who?) actually thinks this makes a lot of sense :-).

Sample tatami room.

 

Ok, so what happens to all of the shoes that are removed before going inside? Japanese homes and buildings are actually very practically designed around this custom and include a genken and a shoe rack right inside the front door. A genken is a recessed landing accessed immediately upon entering. This is where shoes are removed before proceeding up the step into the main part of the room. Also, if done properly, shoes are oriented back toward the door and left against the step. One book even said that the genken is not considered part of the house and visitors can come into that area without violating your space. Fortunately we haven't experienced that and everyone who has come calling thus far has used the doorbell.


The genken in our house.

 

Bottom line,"When in Rome...", and kindly remove your shoes!