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Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

theguardian.com

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Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#81

Post by xxs »

f33d5173 wrote: post #30
cannonpr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I can’t honestly personally understand taking your shoes off in an emergency, however I am sure they have gotten very efficient at it.. I can say that if they didn’t it would cause damage to the home, many Japanese homes, especially traditional but also in general just aren’t built to take shoes. Tatami mats, and even hinoki floors despite being “hard” for a softwood, is still a softwood, so some level of genuine…

Most shoes have rubber soles, to do damage to the floor it would have to be softer than rubber.

more like(ly) polyurethane, not rubber. however any sand would scratch wooden floors

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#82

Post by hdgvhicv »

vkazanov wrote: post #67
ivell wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen in Switzerland that people leave their shoes at the entrance and switch to house shoes. Or they use a shoe cover when they enter house with shoes. Probably because houses are mostly wooden floored. So shoes on is not universal in the West.

Most of the west outside of the US takes shoes off or swaps 'em for indoor shoes.

Just not for emergency services!

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#83

Post by Georgelemental »

analog31 wrote: post #73
Georgelemental wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't always know what the location is like though. You are called to an apartment: maybe it is spotlessly clean, maybe the floor is littered with used needles

A friend of mine who was a paramedic told me that getting people out of a building is actually heavy, dangerous work. "They always die on the crapper, up 3 flights of stairs." Also, in my town, the firefighters are also paramedics. The first people who showed up in my Moment of Need came in a fire truck. The ambulance came a couple minutes later.

For particularly heavy patients, on occasion the only way is to knock down a wall.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#84

Post by vkazanov »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #77
vkazanov wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this how most of the world operates? :-)

In the Nordics (SE, FI, NO, DK) it is pretty much the same. A large part of the year your shoes are a mess and you don’t want that indoors.

Yeah! Same for finland, the baltic states, or poland, or russia, or any country really where there is any kind of serious winter happening.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#85

Post by jwrallie »

swingandamiss wrote: post #3

More Japanese obsessed hacker news posts. What's up with this? There's a daily post on HN of various topics, usually something obscure, about Japan. Why?

I could be mistaken but I think most of those posts seem to show up around business hours in Japan. My guess is it is coming from expats living there.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#86

Post by fakedang »

arjie wrote: post #80
swiftcoder wrote: post #74

It is mind blowing to me that the shoes-off-inside rule is so deeply entrenched that emergency responders remove their shoes at the front door

When I was a child in India, I was taught (not by my parents, by the societal milieu I suppose) to not let the (soles of?) my feet touch a book or a bag that contains books of knowledge. In any case, the behavior is a strongly trained habit so I feel compelled to do it. I do not choose or or not choose to do it. It is close to an automatic behavior, something like wrinkling one’s nose at a bad smell or so on. I was n…

Most (literate, educated) Indians have been trained the same, and it has very little to do with religion. When you do accidentally step on a book though, each religion has their own format - Hindus touch the book then touch their head then chest in penance, Muslims lightly kiss the book or touch the book/bag and kiss their hand, Christians touch the book and cross themselves.

This is something I've noticed is uniquely culturally Indian, and transcends all religions. Which is beautiful.

I was once whacked in the head by a teacher for throwing a book onto the shelf, and rightly so.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#87

Post by ryan_lane »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #15
theonething wrote: post #12

tangential, but I don't understand why keeping your shoes on in your house is a thing. It's so unsanitary. The bottom of your shoes are in contact with things like the floor of public bathrooms, animal feces (when walking on grass), dirt, mud, etc. And it's so much more comfortable to be in your house barefoot, with socks or with slippers. So much cleaner. I'm disgusted when people try to walk in my house with their…

There's nothing unsanitary about it. The bottoms of your shoes simply are not that dirty unless you're walking through abnormally dirty situations.

I've lived in both shoes on and shoes off households and I'm sorry, but shoes are filthy. I wipe my dogs paws when they comes in from walks and their paws are filthy and I wipe them every single time they come back in from walks. Shoes are never wiped.

Take a second, get a tissue, and go wipe the bottom of your shoe.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#88

Post by ryan_lane »

qsera wrote: post #33
Gigachad wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your feet do not need support, they were evolved over millions of years to support themselves. Someone who habitually wears shoes indoors might lose the muscle strength in their feet in the same way someone who drives everywhere loses leg strength, but this isn't natural or optimal.

> they were evolved over millions of years to support themselves. But not on hard floor.

People in shoes off houses tend to have slippers or house shoes, which never go outside. They also tend to have bathroom slippers, which are only ever used in the toilet areas.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#89

Post by b112 »

probably_wrong wrote: post #78
naishoya wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when was the last time you stepped on feces? Try this , when was the last time you stepped somewhere that had previously been stepped on by someone who had walked on a spot which had been stepped on by someone who may have stepped on a spot trod on by ... go far enough back and it's all had feces on it to some small degree. An easy way to keep this concept clear and understand the reasoning behind a 'leave the outs…

I'm going to disagree with your law of "conservation of filth" on the grounds that it's pushing things too far. Whatever amount of feces comes into your system via walking downtown on a regular day and then bringing the shoes inside pales in comparison to the amount of fecal matter that enters via your toothbrush if you keep it in the bathroom. At some point a small amount of dirt is just fine , as evidenced by my im…

The toothbrush analogy is weird, and untrue in most cases. And regardless, just one time stepping in crap, would make up for a lifetime of a few molecules hitting a brush at random intervals.

And of course, toothpaste is a cleaner, so it's not relevant.

But I find this all amusing, because wherever you take your shoes off? That's where all this supposed crap sits from all these shoes left outside. Which means you are walking in your socks in that area, after shoe removal, and entering the house.

So unless you levitate out of that area, your feet are still covered in this supposed crap.

The shoe rule in Japan stems from damaging floors. And checking your feet, shoes or not, is just prudent. But your feet or clean looking shoes?

Equally dirty.

Re: Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge

#90

Post by arjie »

fakedang wrote: post #86
arjie wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a child in India, I was taught (not by my parents, by the societal milieu I suppose) to not let the (soles of?) my feet touch a book or a bag that contains books of knowledge. In any case, the behavior is a strongly trained habit so I feel compelled to do it. I do not choose or or not choose to do it. It is close to an automatic behavior, something like wrinkling one’s nose at a bad smell or so on. I was n…

Most (literate, educated) Indians have been trained the same, and it has very little to do with religion. When you do accidentally step on a book though, each religion has their own format - Hindus touch the book then touch their head then chest in penance, Muslims lightly kiss the book or touch the book/bag and kiss their hand, Christians touch the book and cross themselves. This is something I've noticed is uniquel…

Perhaps it is regional. Where I grew up the error-repair gesture varied certainly (forehead, lips, etc.) but I went to Catholic school for a while and I do not recall the distinction being neatly by religion but my memory isn’t that sharp of that period of my childhood.

Considering the rationale offered by Hindus, I’d be inclined to believe it is a Hindu custom adopted by everyone else by virtue of relative numbers. Sort of like how Christmas is secular in the US, Diwali in India, and perhaps weaker something like Eid in Jordan.

So I agree, very little to do with religion today, but perhaps not so always. Something like Halloween perhaps.

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