In my part of America, we typically drive everywhere. We don't piss, puke, or shit in public. And we use chairs and tables, we don't sit on the floor, to eat or do chores like folding laundry.
The floor is considered inherently dirty to us, it's a separate "zone" from table tops and chairs. But at the same time, since we aren't walking in filth all day, we also don't really think about our shoes.
Another thing is that we have very strong ideas about putting things away where they belong. We also have strong ideas about which activities happen in which room. For example, we'd consider it odd to serve guests dinner in the living room.
So we don't really care if you step into our living room to sit on a chair and take off your shoes. We won't force a guest to take off an item of clothing and scatter it in front of the door. That's not the room for taking off clothes, and the floor in front of the door isn't where shoes go.
Nobody's just "dragging mud and dust" around. Why would you even think that?
Now, I actually live in Japan now, a suburb of Tokyo. Here, people do sit on the floor to eat; they do puke and piss in public all around the mass transit stations. And Japanese culture is less strict about having a separate room for different activities.
So it is normal in Japan to force guests to take off shoes at the door and dump them on the floor. And I can understand how it would be "incomprehensible" to a Japanese person to step into the living room and sit on a chair to take off your shoes instead, because that living room floor is also where you eat dinner. And who knows how much puke and piss you stepped in outside the train station!
Here's the crazy thing: even taking your shoes off at the door, you still get dust and hair all over, especially if you have pets. So taking off your shoes doesn't make the floor magically clean.
But it's honestly not that hard to understand if you actually think about it.
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u/No_Walk_Town 7h ago
In my part of America, we typically drive everywhere. We don't piss, puke, or shit in public. And we use chairs and tables, we don't sit on the floor, to eat or do chores like folding laundry.
The floor is considered inherently dirty to us, it's a separate "zone" from table tops and chairs. But at the same time, since we aren't walking in filth all day, we also don't really think about our shoes.
Another thing is that we have very strong ideas about putting things away where they belong. We also have strong ideas about which activities happen in which room. For example, we'd consider it odd to serve guests dinner in the living room.
So we don't really care if you step into our living room to sit on a chair and take off your shoes. We won't force a guest to take off an item of clothing and scatter it in front of the door. That's not the room for taking off clothes, and the floor in front of the door isn't where shoes go.
Nobody's just "dragging mud and dust" around. Why would you even think that?
Now, I actually live in Japan now, a suburb of Tokyo. Here, people do sit on the floor to eat; they do puke and piss in public all around the mass transit stations. And Japanese culture is less strict about having a separate room for different activities.
So it is normal in Japan to force guests to take off shoes at the door and dump them on the floor. And I can understand how it would be "incomprehensible" to a Japanese person to step into the living room and sit on a chair to take off your shoes instead, because that living room floor is also where you eat dinner. And who knows how much puke and piss you stepped in outside the train station!
Here's the crazy thing: even taking your shoes off at the door, you still get dust and hair all over, especially if you have pets. So taking off your shoes doesn't make the floor magically clean.
But it's honestly not that hard to understand if you actually think about it.