Toilet Slippers

"Ellie," whispers Josh. "I have a secret to tell you." I am busy reading e-mail and try to ignore him. "It's not really a secret, is it," I say.
"No, actually it's not a secret at all," he says. "It's kind of like the opposite of a secret. Here wait, let me write it down and show you."

Before continuing, dear readers, I feel it's important to give you a quick overview of certain aspects of etiquette here in fair Nippon, in particular shoe etiquette--outside shoes go off once you are indoors to be replaced by slippers, and even said slippers are removed to walk on the tatami. This you probably know. In addition to these house slippers or inside shoes, there are also toilet slippers, which live in the bathroom and for which regular house slippers are exchanged upon entering said bathroom. In the hotel where we are staying right now there is thus a pair of slippers in each room, to be worn around the hotel, and a couple of pairs of toilet slippers in the bathroom. When it comes to faux pas, Westerners are notoriously gauche when it comes to the shoe rules. We're barbarians. Then there's the tangled web of general toilet etiquette--although the Japanese have the strangest, fanciest toilets ever and obviously put a lot of thought into their design and use (with the exception of the squat toilets, which I have decided really aren't that bad, except on moving trains, when they seem rather alarmingly perilous), they are obsessively paranoid about people knowing when you are actually using one, which explains the fake birds-chirping sounds some toilets play when you are doing your business.

So when Josh hands me back my notebook and I read what it says, you can imagine my mortification. "YOU'RE WEARING TOILET SLIPPERS," it reads. I look down and yes, there they are on my feet: the toilet slippers. I have been wearing them for god only knows how long, down here in the lobby. It's sort of like discovering I've been walking around without any pants on, but maybe worse. I make Josh walk in front of me as I sidle to the elevator, though of course everyone has probably already noticed my enormous, bright fire-engine red slippers that have the word TOILET printed on them in big white letters. Where are my regular slippers? They are in the bathroom, of course. God damn this country's arcane rules.

The moments after realizing that Ellie is wearing the toilet slippers in the hotel lobby, in fact, in the crowded computer lounge area filled with Japanese and foreign tourists alike as well as the hotel staff, are hysterical for me and embarrassing for her not just because she has found out that she's just committed a disgusting social blunder, but more so because I remind her that she is trapped, with every passing second, into continuously committing that same disgusting terrible terrible social blunder with every step she takes in her shiny red squeaky TOILET slippers all the way to the bathroom.

The best part is, of course, that it's not like this was the first time Ellie has made this blunder with the toilet slippers. Not even today. In FACT it was about, oh I don't know, a good hour, hour and a half prior to the incident she descibed that there, a knockin at my door was Ellie, clad in self-same ruby toilet slippers. "Josh!" she says. "Quick! Take a picture of me wearing the toilet slippers!" I tell her to squat down some, so I can get her face in the shot also as well as the bright lady-bug red slippers and the T-O-I-L-E-T lettered across them. "Oh my god, hurry up! Someone's totally gonna see me wearing these outside of the bathroom!" Just like yesterday? "Just like yesterday!" And there she is, photographed and everything, squatting in the tiiiiiiiny rectangle of shoe-wearable space in my doorway, safe behind closed doors, until immediately afterwards going downstairs in them. Did we mention that they're bright bright red?

What Josh still doesn't know is that back at his apartment in Imabari before we set out on this journey, there was at least one time that I forgot to remove my toilet slippers before leaving the bathroom. I wore them all the way into his (tatami-floored) bedroom before I noticed. Also, I might have sort of stepped on his bed.