Recently I have been contemplating some of the differences between Japan and America.  As you already know, Japan and America are just a little different, hence the title, which is Japananese for a little different.  Actually, all wittyness aside, there are many easily observable differences and many not so easily observable differences between the two countries that deserve mention in an effort to understand the Japanese better.  I will mention only one in this post, but will write more about this subject in future posts.

Usually the first noticeable difference many westerners pick up on is that the Japanese people always take off their shoes when entering their homes and various other buildings.  A typical home will have an entry way that is either tiled or linoleum that you can store your shoes in, and then you take a step up to the main floor of the house.  They do this in order to keep their floors and carpets clean.  Shoes worn inside, they feel, make the floor no cleaner than the ground outside.

Once inside, slippers are commonly worn to protect against the cold floors and these may be worn on linoleum or carpet.  However, there is a special set of slippers reserved only for the bathroom that are not to be worn in the rest of the house.  This comes with the mindset that the bathroom is usually the dirtiest place in the house and so its germs should be confined to the space within it.  When you need to use the bathroom, you simply step out of your house slippers outside of the bathroom and into the bathroom slippers inside the bathroom, and of course, reversing the process when you are done.

A common type of flooring used in Japan is called tatami mats, which are different from both carpet and linoleum.  They are a neat texture of woven straw and are to be kept as clean as possible.  With this in mind, the Japanese people don’t even wear slippers on them.  It used to be that this type of flooring was the only type used throughout most of the home.  These days, however, many houses have more western style flooring such as linoleum or carpet, and generally have only one or two rooms that contain the tatami mats.  As for me, I love the feel of the tatami mat underneath my feet, however I am thankful for the carpet and linoleum because it’s not so cold in the wintertime since I can wear slippers on it.

I have really grown to enjoy taking my shoes off at the door and putting slippers on.  It creates a feeling of separateness from the outside.  Because of taking them off so often, many Japanese people wear shoes that they can slip in and out of easily and quickly.  When we first came here, I just had my regular sneakers that I had to lace and unlace each time I used them.  It wasn’t long before I found myself at the store buying a pair of shoes that I could just slip on!

Please pray for Colby and I as we seek to be culturally sensitive.  Thankfully we have gotten into the habit of taking our shoes off, but pray that we would be watchful of other cultural things we need to keep in mind.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 9th, 2009 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Life in Cross-Cultural Ministry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.