^{A new Japanese adventure is underway – and with it my usual challenging of coping with Japanese indoor slippers. At a hotel I’ve been staying in at Nachi Katsuura on the Wakayama Peninsula, you are expected to leave your shoes at the entry in a designated cubby hole and change into this provided footwear. For me, these slippers are incredibly dangerous. They never quite fit and at any moment I could slip slide away in them!}

^{You retrieve your shoes each time you leave the hotel. And you keep the same slippers for your stay. At any time your cubby hole is filled either with your shoes – you are in house – or with your slippers – you have left the building!}

^{Luckily for me and my wonky knee, there is a tiny stool available and a shoe horn. It takes me a while to get my shoes on and off.}

^{I’m unsure why this hotel won’t let you wear shoes inside. There are tatami mats in some areas of the hotel, but you take your slippers off and enter in your socks. I don’t know what happens if you are not wearing socks.}

^{I’m used to this sort of thing entering temples etc, and in ryokans. But I’ve never come across it before in a hotel. I do have concerns about leaving my shoes unattended in their cubby hole by the hotel’s front door. Do they miss me too?}

^{A long time ago in Greece I left my shoes outside my door in a hostel – I recall they were a little smelly for long days hiking. The next morning they were gone, replaced by a note – “gone for a walk somewhere cool”. After a major search and rescue operation, we found them – inside an unused fridge along the corridor!}

^{This whole laborious shoe changing exercise at the hotel door is a problem if you need to leave in a hurry – as I did last night when I noticed an amazing sunset developing over the harbour. Sunsets don’t hold their peak long – and as my hotel window didn’t open, I had to move like the speed of lighting to access the elevator to the ground floor and run for a good vantage spot to photograph the sunset before it disappeared.}

^{Both shoes and slippers were abandoned as I disappeared into the emerging night in my Japanese bright yellow socks!}

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