Footwear of Japan

The Japanese love a good shoe. Well, actually they love shoes of any type, good, eyewateringly horrendous, impractical, garish, whatever, as long as it's new.



Here, for example is a television shopping channel advertising shoes. In this case, they spent up to 8 minutes bending the shoe by hand, then pursing it apart, perhaps in theory trying to convey the "comfort" of this particular style, but in reality, pre-smooching the shoe prior to purchase.

And now, some pictures....


A decidedly flaccid, oddly coloured jandal.


In the Nike Store in Harajuku, customers may personalise and customise their own Nike shoe, thereby making "individual" and "unique". Of course, there's no accounting for taste...


....For example.


Here's a new design from Asics. It's completely acceptable. Well, to be fair, it's only moderately bizarre in a country that retails the following examples of shoe for the otherwise-sane human being.....


these....in case you were looking for a shoe that evoked strong memories of an amphibious vehicle...


...these...that offer multiple option for doing up the shoe, including the previously-unseen "3/4 skew lacing", which having now seen, it's previous lack of commonality within shoe design is not a mystery...


...shoes that look like hippie ribbons...


...shoes that are heavily coated in animal pelting (I bet these smell phenomenal after a summer's day)...


....shoes that have been designed to save on ...on.... ...whatever that thing is made out of...


....or you can have it in this cheerful fruity variant...


....shoes that look like a grim-faced, middle-aged lesbians well-worn beanbag that her old dog spends the day upon, farting incessantly...


...dozens of revolting sandals (but then, Japan is not alone bequeathing such monstrosities upon its populous)...


....these... these.... THESE!!!


...and obviously, being Japan, there's the cartoon version of the "Gumby Thwomper", just in case you had a single shred of dignity left that you were looking to erase for all eternity...

But then, my main squeeze secured herself a fantastic pair of Japan-only Nike hightops.

So in summary, Japan is fantastic, wacky, confusing, incongruous, and the home to many terrible shoes. Bless.