I feel imprisoned inside the school because of this culture’s attitude on shoes. I’m at work from around 8:15am until 4:30pm every weekday. I teach anywhere from 2 to 4 classes a day. This means that I have nothing to do for up to 6 ¼ hrs a day. The weather is getting beautiful and I’d love to spend it outside. I’d also like to spend less time on my ass in the teacher’s room losing muscle and gaining flub. I’d also like to spend more time outside of class meeting the students. The logical thing to do would be to go play some games with them, stop fretting and just go out and do it. Oh… but it’s not that easy because of shoes.
Since I am required by my company to wear business attire to work, I wear my nice, vaguely formal, vaguely causal Earth Shoes. They’re very orthopedic and comfortable and yet respectable. They don’t look stupid with a suit. Stylish and practical for the professional life. Black leather, with a strap. I could get away with my more durable Doc Martens but they are way too difficult to get and on and off, and this is extremely important in Japan.

When I get to work, I stop in the genkan and change into my indoor shoes. I even have my personal, labeled with my name in katakana, shoes cabinet. I put my Earth shoes in the cabinet and take out my indoor shoes, a pair of dark blue canvas pumps I once used for tango lessons. Since they are dance shoes with suede bottoms for sliding, I have never worn them outside. This is very important to the Japanese. Since they are dark colored pumps, they also look good with business clothing. This is very important to me.

Some schools require you to take off your indoor shoes and put on separate slippers to go to the toilet. Since most schools have Japanese toilets, this is a good idea. Luckily, the schools provide toilet slippers and I am not required to have my own. The toilet slippers are usually a bit too small, though. And at the elementary schools they only have kid sized slippers in some of the toilets. This forces me into a rather hilarious tiptoe dance to the squat toilet.

During the school day I could probably while away my time playing dodgeball with the kids. Ah… not so fast. To play in the gym, I need white-soled indoor trainers. For some reason you can’t even wear your normal indoor shoes in the gym, not that I would want to play dodgeball in pumps. They would probably let me play in my socks if I really wanted, but I’m not sure I want the risk of running away from pummeling volleyballs in just socks. And I’m sure at 177cm and blonde, I’d be quite the target.

So I need some trainers. That will solve all my problems, right? Wrong. If I want to be able to play with the kids between the end of school and when I get off work, I need two sets of trainers. I need indoor trainers and outdoor trainers. What? You think you can take your pristine white trainers outside to kick a dirty ball around in the dirty dirt and then bring those gross suckers back into the (at least 30yrs old and dingy) gym? Hello! The gym is inside!

I don’t get it either. To successfully navigate a Japanese school day I need to utilize 5 pairs of shoes.

1. Work appropriate outdoor shoes
2. Work appropriate indoor shoes
3. Toilet slippers
4. Indoor trainers
5. Outdoor trainers
I guess I could cut it down to four pairs of shoes if I wore outdoor trainers with my business clothes and then used those to kick the ball around after school. But I’m just way too fashionable for that. I don’t roll with the sneakers with suits. None of the Japanese ladies at my schools do either.

What makes it even harder is that unlike the other teachers, I have three different schools to attend. I can’t just leave them all in a tidy shoes cabinet and forget about them. I have to lug them to three different locations a week.