Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
Barbaric? Arrogant? I think your words are little extreme here.
In the West we don't tend to sit on the floor. Our butts and hands are always 3 feet above the floor... Therefore there isn't a need to take off shoes.
However if you have tatami mats on your floor, where you sit, sleep, place your hands, etc. The last thing you want is any more dirt that is necessary getting into your tatami mats.
Makes perfect sense to me, and I know more people than not that move back from Japan and maintain that custom (yours truly included).
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I don't think so. From the times of adopting chopsticks because eating with hands or silverware like the West was considered savage, to the closing of the nation to free itself from the "impurities" of other lands, to modern society where xenophobia still runs rampant. Where I've sat in classes and had discussions where people were trying to convince me that Japanese are "special" and are completely different from all other people.
Save for the fact that tatami can rip, your argument about sitting at a table versus sitting on the floor with shoes is bullshit. No need to take off shoes in a house because you're sitting in a chair? What if your house is all white carpet? And also if that were the case, you would have gone back home and continued to resume wearing shoes in your house rather than adopting the Japanese way, because I'm sure you're back to sitting in chairs again.