I grew up in tatami rooms. My mother cleaned tatamis, first wiping them with a wet cloth and then drying them with a dry cloth. Carpets could be changed easily, but tatamis remained there for a long time. I loved tatamis, but I would wonder how clean they were.
When my parents built their house and I was in third grade, most rooms had tatamis. The hallway and eat-in kitchen though, had wood floors. As in many Japanese houses, we used slippers on the wood floors, but took them off before walking on the tatami. When it was sunny, my mother took all slippers to the small terrace to kill whatever germs that may have been on the slippers. The slippers felt fluffy and warm after that. My mother took a very good care of them, but I didn’t want to wear them, unless it was a cold day. They couldn’t be washed like socks, and therefore seemed unclean. But I wore them so that I wouldn’t leave foot prints on the floor, which I was sure would bother my mother.
And there was a pair of vinyl slippers designated for the powder room. When I went there from my room, I needed to put on regular slippers to walk in the hallway, and then change into the powder room slippers as I entered that room. On my way back to my own room, I would follow the procedure in reverse, until I reaching my tatami room and taking them off before I entered my room. This may seem too much to deal with, but if you live in a Japanese house, it soon becomes automatic. However, someone rushing out of the powder room to pick up the phone in the hallway could realize after the call that the vinyl slippers invaded the clean wood floor. This doesn’t mean much in the U.S., but it’s a crisis in Japanese home. People would make various noises and frantically clean the floor until they felt the floor is clean and safe to walk on with slippers.
But I wondered. Does wearing a different pair of slippers really secure the cleanliness of other parts of the house? Was feeling clean different from being clean? But of course, I never voiced this question in Japan. The Japanese common sense response would be “Of course it is. Are you nuts?”
I don’t worry about messiness. I can live in a huge mess. I’m not germ-phobic, either. I’m just curious if things that we worry about have a real impact on our lives.
Some of my friends in Japan told me,
“I can’t believe people go in to the house with their shoes on.” But most people in the world live that way. As far as I know, people in America don’t get sick because they wear shoes in the house. But I certainly understand the Japanese sentiment about this. It took me a decade to convince myself about this.
First it was a cat. When I got married, a calico cat came with my husband. The sand from the cat’s litter box traveled in her paws and found a place to hide everywhere in the carpet. I loved her unconditionally, and she used me unconditionally, but sand and cleanliness couldn’t coexist in my head.
Then, I started to have older friends and neighbors. I couldn’t bring myself to ask them to take their shoes off, as they would need to put them back on later. That was work for them, especially after a few drinks. Knowing I’m Japanese, some guests brought another pair of shoes and wore them inside the house, but it was obvious that they had worn them outside before. I appreciated their kindness deeply, but in terms of Japanese cleanliness, they totally missed the point.
Another cleanliness issue was the space where food would travel. At a consulting firm in New York City, they served a pizza lunch on Fridays. I wasn’t a big pizza fan, but American colleagues would tap me on the shoulder and say, “Michiko, it’s a free lunch. Come on!” I would drag myself through the rest room to the other side of the building to get a slice of pizza. After exchanging a few words with people there, I would carry a pizza and a drink back to my desk, using my card key to open the door to the hallway. My American colleagues would say to me,
“You can go through the rest room! You don’t need to use the card key to go back to your desk!”
Obviously I knew this. If the plate with the pizza had a lid on it, I could’ve run through the rest room so fast that no germs would have a chance of getting on my pizza. But, without the lid, I just couldn’t do it.
The two most critical cleanliness moments came at holiday seasons.
One day before Thanksgiving, my husband’s family and I were in the kitchen. Everyone else started drinking beer or wine, but I asked for some water. My mother-in-law gave me some in a mug, but I found a cat hair in it. I was going to change the water, but she asked, “What’s wrong?” I hesitated, but I needed clean water.
“Well, I see something in the water.” She said, “Let me see,” and then put her fingers in the water, picked out the cat hair and returned the mug back to me, “There!” I had seen her caress her cats a minute ago, which made me shiver. My husband asked, “Are you Okay?” Of course I was not. But if you weigh it against the risk of tarnishing my relationship with my mother-in-law, I had no other choice but to say “Sure.”
Then one Easter, my family was at someone’s house. The hostess said, “Would you like some wine? You can use the glasses over there.” The glasses were standing on an open shelf, and looked quite old, so old that I couldn’t see through them. Then I realized that they were covered with dust. I stood with a glass behind the hostess who was at the sink, and said, “Can I rinse this a bit?”
Her response was “They’re clean! I washed them before.” Well, yes, but probably three months ago for Christmas. I didn’t know what to say. Thank goodness, my husband grabbed the wine glass and said “I’ll rinse it for you.” Those words were like a sweet melody that gave me enormous comfort. He is American, and we have many differences, but we share the same sense of cleanliness. This is something very critical to my wellbeing and therefore to our marriage.
I can live with a mess, can even live with sandy floors, but for me to relax and enjoy food, I need a clean space and a wine glass that sparkles with cheer.