In Dutch culture it is far more common to keep shoes on literally everywhere, so perhaps I'm biased, but I would think that in an emergency where every second counts, these people can be forgiven for not adhering to the strictest etiquette?
I'm not surprised the person last mentioned in the article, who suggests exactly that, got 800 likes on their comment. I am surprised that it even needed to be said.
Now I'm suddenly wondering (probably stupidly) whether firefighters also take their shoes off when entering a burning building.
Obviously, in an emergency, yea, keep them on. That said,
> In Dutch culture it is far more common to keep shoes on literally everywhere
It is in many cultures, including my own family's, but having gotten used to taking them off from living in Japan, I find it extremely strange taking them off is not more common.
It feel similar to doctors refusing to wash their hands during surgery, though I get I'm not doing surgery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
I never thought about it growing up but once I got used to it I can believe I used to walk across my house carpet in shoes that had dog shit, grease, and other grim in them, and then later lie on my floor and watch TV or whatever. I don't get why people don't see that and get grossed out more.
Sure, if they were covered in mud or feces then I'd take then off but for small amounts I wouldn't notice. Why that doesn't matter to more people seems more strange to me than the status quo.
I also take my shoes and off and find it gross when people don’t.
That said, I don’t think it’s really rational. Our houses are full of bacteria and dirt one way or another anyway. It’s impossible to avoid that without having some kind of airlock equipped with a shower in your porch.
> That said, I don’t think it’s really rational. Our houses are full of bacteria and dirt one way or another anyway.
True, but I don't know about you, but we don't have literal rocks, sediment, dirt pee, or literal poop on our floors in our home, anywhere. But shoes do occasionally step on stuff like that no matter how small, and neither of those things I want inside of my house on the floor.
But you're right that there still is bacteria or dirt all over the place, no doubt. But still, I don't step on something slightly soft with my socks in the living room and then inspect my foot to find poop stuck to it, and I think I'm gonna continue to prefer this way.
> rocks, sediment, dirt pee, or literal poop
This is basically what dust is. It’s everywhere.
Where do you live, where dust and pee/poop is the same? I'm fine with having small amount of the former inside, it's unavoidable, but the second is avoidable by removing your shoes.
I think we can roughly split paramedic visits into “patient needs to get out ASAP” and patient can’t get out alone or with help of friends and family”, so I would hope they keep their shoes on for the first type.
But ambulances in with full sirens begging over their speaker-system to have pedestrians at Shibuya crossing let the vehicle through, is probably the worst thing about Japan.
As for your second question, I’m reminded of Bob Mortimer in Would I lie To You: “… then the fire brigade came and ruined the whole house” - “Bob, surely the fire was ruining the house” - “No, water damage”. Maybe if those darn firefighters had taken their boots off, there had been a bit more left of Bobs childhood home.
>No, water damage
That's what we learned in fire fighting training. Everything that doesn't get destroyed by the fire and smoke will get destroyed by the water you use to put the fire out. A house on fire is lost. You just save people and animals and then you do whatever you need to protect the neighbouring structures.
> But ambulances in with full sirens begging over their speaker-system to have pedestrians at Shibuya crossing let the vehicle through, is probably the worst thing about Japan.
Unfortunately ambulances in Japan blare their sirens any time they are transporting a patient, and because they are free some people use them like taxis. So you may see an ambulance at 2AM driving down a residential street blaring their siren at full volume, going 5 mph while the medics call around to various hospitals to see who will take their patient with an upset stomach.
Once I passed a moving ambulance with the siren on...while slowly riding my bike down an otherwise empty road.
The result is that Japanese people seem to tune out the siren. If the driver isn't also on the loudspeaker telling them insistently to move aside, they assume it's not a "real" emergency.
> “No, water damage”
Bob should have used some of his Fuji 9, that fixes everything!
I've known enough people who worked in EMS to know that it's very common for there to be little alignment between 1a)what the dispatcher is told 1b)what comes from dispatcher 2)what they see when they walk in the door and 3)what the person actually needs.
I suspect that there are several levels of severity in an emergency and that when appropriate the responders forego removal of shoes. It's a low depth article, they didn't go into details.
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 damage would occur. Again of-course versus the emergency in saving a human life, I’m not quite sure I can understand it.
Also in the Netherlands, doctors / nurses in my local hospital wear things like crocs and other slip-in type shoes - don't think paramedics do, just something I noticed.
Most shoes have rubber soles, to do damage to the floor it would have to be softer than rubber.
Tatami is very common in Japanese houses and I was told you're not even really supposed to wear hard-soled slippers on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatami
You can quite easily have small rocks wedged in the tread of your shoes which will scratch floors.
I’m not saying the shoes would damage the floor but that’s not really true. Both sides of the contact get some wear, even if one of them is softer.
more like(ly) polyurethane, not rubber. however any sand would scratch wooden floors