Mystery of Slippers

Slippers. If you ever visit a home in Japan, they always offer them to you the moment you enter their home. I get this sense that people actually feel ashamed if they don't offer slippers to you...as if their homes were not clean or something??? (I don't know why offering slippers is a MUST here.)

Anyways, at the school I work at, they also have slippers for students who want to wear them. Most kids don't seem to even register the slippers existence, so they just step on them and go up to the classrooms.

To me, the whole wearing of slippers custom is a mystery. First of all, people ALWAYS take their shoes off at the front door, so no one ever walks into the house with shoes....so the house is clean, in terms of having dirt from shoes get all over the house.

The house is clean, but people wear slippers. In the winter, this makes sense since it gets pretty cold (due to no central heating in most homes in Japan) and any extra warmth is much appreciated.

What I don't understand is...these slippers are meant for indoors, so my logic follows that we ought to be able to walk anywhere in the house.

But in reality this isn't so. There's usually a "Washitu" or a Japanese style room in most homes here...early on I found out that we were NOT supposed to wear our slippers into these rooms! Me, not ever having been accustomed to wearing slippers in the first place, felt no hesitence at all walking into the washitsu with slippers on (after all, it's all indoors, right?!).

Every time my boss spotted me freely walking in and out of the washitu with my slippers on, she would look at me funny...but not say anything. I didn't know what that was about, but I think it finally irked her so much that she said "You're not supposed to wear slippers on the tatami (straw mat flooring). " After many similar reminders, I'm happy to say, I've finally grown into the habit of remembering to take off my slippers when entering the washitsu =).

Another place in the house where we're supposed not only take OFF our slippers but also CHANGE them, is the bathroom. This unspoken rule (of which there are many many MANY in Japan it feels like), doesn't seem as strict. I've noticed that some people change their slippers, and some don't.

Again, I have a hard time comprehending by what sort of rules these taking off/changing of slippers gets decided. It must not be a simple indoor/outdoor thing, because if it were, we'd be able to walk anywhere in the house. I haven't yet grown into the habit of changing my slippers when using the bathroom (except in public bathrooms that have these plastic sandals that OBVIOUSLY are meant to be used) since it's not as strictly enforced.

Maybe one of these days the mystery of slippers in Japanese homes will become a little more clear to me. Until then, I will probably continue to wear the wrong slippers into the wrong rooms. Actually, I still often FORGET to wear slippers, and if I do happen to remember, I forget them in some room or under a desk and have to go about in search of them.