Here's the biggie, in terms of knowing how to follow Japanese clothing protocols: Inside schools and homes, one does NOT wear one's outside shoes. Instead, just inside the door, one slips off one's shoes, and switches to slippers or -- more rarely -- inside shoes. The point of this change is cleanliness, to leave the dirt, dust and muck outside. It's not too unusual in the USA to find a household in which people don't wear their shoes inside, it's just that the Japanese take the custom further in the donning of slippers and in the uniformity of the practice. And here's an extra step that I think makes splendid sense: There are special slippers just inside the doorway of every bathroom, for one to change into these special pairs while in the room (which only contains a sink and the toilet; the bathtub is in a separate bathing room), and thus avoid the accumulation of any, er, bathroom residues, shall we say, upon one's shoes.

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