On Monday, I arrived at school and was told we would have a fire drill later in the day. Not having experienced a Japanese fire drill (though I recall several of the Chinese variety), a question popped into my head: Do Japanese change their indoor shoes for outdoor ones before proceeding outside? Normally, wearing indoor shoes outside is a punishable sin. I posed the question to the teacher sitting across from me. "Absolutely not," she said, "we must pretend its a real emergency so we do not change our shoes." So an hour later the fire bell goes off and I proceed outside with my indoor shoes. All of the students did the same. But as I looked around, I notice that every teacher had changed their shoes. Every single one, including the one who told me not to do so. Perplexed, I called that teacher a liar to her face, and oh so carefully avoided the doormat as I entered the school with my now tainted shoes.
“There is no fun in a thorough understanding of any subject. A domain that naturally contains more mystery than is solvable on any given day, like fishing, is very enjoyable. Such mystery overflows itself.” --Scott Bowen
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