We were in Japan for an Awakening to Presence (ATP) workshop.  This is the course work I did from 2007 to 2014.  There is a class and a public workshop in Japan and I have never been to one of their classes.  I decided it was time to go experience what it is like in Japan.  The class/workshop is done at a retreat center in the mountains near Bessho Onsen.

The ways of the retreat center and Japanese people are different than ours in many ways.  One of the things that is different is shoes.  Shoes are not used in homes.  They are not used in some restaurants, but are ok in others.  I couldn’t tell what the difference on restaurants was.  We met the Japanese assistant teachers at the train station and got in a couple of cabs with them to go up to the retreat center.  We were arriving early with them to prepare for the class/workshop which would start a day later.  I’m glad we arrived with them as it would have been more difficult to navigate the cultural differences without them.  When we got to the retreat center, we walked up a steep path to the main retreat center building.  This was the building where we would eat and sleep.  There was a large raised deck.  They put their suitcases on the deck on their sides.  Then wet towels were brought out to wipe off the wheels and bottoms of the suitcases.  I would have messed that up if they had not showed us what needed to be done.

Then you take off your shoes and put them in cubby holes.  There are around 60-100 pairs of slippers near the cubby holes.  None of them are fit for a woman.  They are all giant, but probably too small for some larger men.  They basically fit no one.  But you have to wear the slippers as you walk across the decks.  I’m not quite sure how to walk in slippers that keep falling off while carrying a newly cleaned suit case.  Then when you get to the room we are sleeping in, the bathroom or the room where we are to eat, you take the slippers off at the door and go in socks.  When you go into the bathroom, you leave your deck slippers at the door and put on bathroom slippers.  That seems like a lot of effort to me.  Then when everyone is at dinner there a ton of slippers outside of the dining room.  When you leave the dining room, the slippers you came in with are gone and you end up taking any slippers you can find.  This makes no sense to me.  Is it cleaner to wear the same slippers someone else was wearing an hour ago than to just forgo the slippers altogether?  It definitely would have been safer as I was constantly shuffling just to not toss a slipper across the deck or to face plant when one came off as I was trying to step on that foot.

I love the idea of no shoes indoors, but I’m not quite on board with deck slippers.