Indoor Shoes / Outdoor Shoes

A story about Japanese schools

In Japan, it is customary to remove your shoes before entering houses, schools, and many other buildings such as doctors’ offices, dentists’ offices, and various dining facilities. Many places where you are expected to remove your shoes upon entering provide you with slippers to wear while you are inside their establishment. However, if you are working in these establishments, it is expected that you will supply your own pair of shoes designated specifically for being worn inside.

I work as an assistant language teacher (ALT) in Japan at various elementary and junior high schools. My school assignments change from year to year, as do the assignments of many other ALTs across Japan. Currently, I am only working at three schools. In the past, though, I have worked at as many as seven different schools in a year. Up until this year, rather than buying seven pairs of shoes to be used and kept at several different schools, I elected to carry one pair of indoor shoes with me whenever I left the house and went to work.

Except, sometimes I didn’t.

In the morning rush to get out the door, I occasionally forgot to bring my indoor shoes with me.

And when I did, I had to make a decision: should I just wear my outdoor shoes inside and hope that nobody notices, or should I borrow a pair of the slippers that are designated for use by visitors and spend the day struggling to move around while keeping them on my feet? I’m willing to guess that many people who have worked as an ALT in Japan have faced this dilemma once or twice.

As a person living in a foreign country, I have found that I constantly have to decide how strictly I want to observe cultural expectations. Depending on the time and the situation, I don’t always understand the necessity of following rules and customs that I haven’t been raised with. Also, because I haven't been raised with these rules and customs, I don't always feel pressured to follow them.

In regard to forgetting to bring my indoor shoes to work, I have resolved this problem in two ways. At times, I have opted to ignore the unspoken rule of not wearing outdoor shoes inside and have walked right into school, hoping all the while that nobody would notice or mind what I had done. Other times, I have opted to spend the day in slippers that were too small for my feet and struggled to move around classrooms, down hallways, and up and down stairways while the slippers continuously fell off my feet.

Many ALTs that I know have made a similar but bigger mistake, the mistake of wearing their outdoor shoes into school on their last working day of the year. These ALTs have all told me a similar story. The story goes like this. At the end of the day, when I tried to quietly leave school and go home, the principal, vice principal, and other staff followed me out to the front door to thank me for my year of work and say a proper goodbye. (This is a Japanese custom.) I didn’t know what to do. No matter how many times I said, “It’s okay. You don’t have to walk me to the door.” They did. When we got there, there was nothing I could do but say thank you, put my head down, and walk right out the door. It was really embarrassing.

This past Tuesday, for the first time, I saw Japanese students struggling with this same problem. As is customary in Japan, students brought their indoor shoes home before winter break so that the school, including the cubbies where students indoor and outdoor shoes are kept, could be cleaned. This cleaning is typically done by the students themselves as they report to school for sports practice, band practice, and other club meetings. As you might have guessed, students are also expected to bring their indoor shoes back to school when classes resume. Apparently, not all of them remember to do this.

As I walked around the classroom during my lessons this past Tuesday, I noticed that some of the boys weren’t wearing shoes. Having never seen this in Japan before, I first thought that it was some kind of team prank or initiation. As it turned out, though, these students had simply forgotten to bring their indoor shoes back to school. When I have done this, I have always had the option of wearing the slippers that are available for visitors to wear. However, these students weren’t given that option. As a punishment for their absent-mindedness, they were forced to spend the day in their socks, which, considering how cold Japanese schools are in the winter, must have been quite a punishment.