Travelsty: Shoes

Because I was going to be hiking through snow at various points during the trip I wore my boots, a relatively inexpensive pair of work boots that I think I got from K-Mart many moons ago (I seem to recall annoying Kristen at one point by buying an identical pair to the pair I was wearing at the time and then throwing the old ones in the bin as I left the store, who knew not taking the opportunity to buy different shoes to ones I already owned was a crime?)

At any rate, they were kind of necessary for part of the trip and quite handy with the removable cleats on them.

spiky

The cleats leave a nice impression in fresh snow

this is the sort of snow you want to be walking in, when it gives a bit under your foot, maybe a centimeter or two giving you a little bit of grip

you don't want it to give too much, it makes it hard to walk

and you end up with the bottom of your jeans getting wet

This brownish mush that has melted slightly and refrozen capturing dirt and oil (it's most common on or right beside roads) is pretty slippery, although they sometimes put little black rocks on it to give it a little bit of grip which makes it not too bad.

this looks like good snow, but the very top has melted and refrozen, so if you don't crunch through that top layer it can be a little slippery.

You know what's more slippery than snow that has melted and refrozen several times to form a layer of frictionless ice? The white paint used on the crosswalk stripes. On the foolhardy would walk on them instead of stepping over them to take each step in between the lines (or just walking slightly to the left and avoiding them entirely)

the gradient down from the snow covering the footpath to the much more cleared road can be treacherous. You'll often want to step over it completely to avoid losing your footing as it crumbles under your weight stepping down. This is of course a trap, since if you do so here you will step right over it and onto the white paint of a crosswalk line before slipping and sliding to your death in oncoming traffic at the nearby intersection.

Here the gradient is sharper and easier to just step down. Of note however is the area of sidewalk that they have cleared to mock people that are walking on the part of the sidewalk that they need to use to get where they want to go that has not been cleared.

the small black rocks before they've had a chance to become entombed in the melted and refrozen slush

This is probably the best your going to get in terms of a surface to cross the road on.

which leads us to the worst surface of all. This black ice is some unholy concoction proving that oil and water will mix, if only to form an ice more slippery than either one on its own.

The black ice hides in patches in the road, waiting to kill pedestrians too busy looking at their mobile phones than to pay attention to where they're walking and not die.

sidewalks and roads aren't the only place frozen water plots your imminent demise. These temple steps are easy enough to climb up, but will take you either a minute and a half or a second and a half to descend, depending.

In some places it's fairy obvious that the snow is only covering the ground by a centimeter or two at most

In other cases, like this sidewalk out the front of the weirdly named Italian restaurant, so much snow has fallen and not been cleared that these witches hats are almost buried. (And who knows, maybe those witches hats are sitting on top of snow that was there already. Perhaps there to mark the place that the previous set of witches hats got buried)

Or perhaps they marked a lost shoe?
This thong was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, only mildly stuck in the ice.

At any rate, in summary, if you're leaving tracks like this, you're probably not going to slip over and fall

although ideally you want to be leaving tracks like this, as it means you're riding a snow mobile.

Long story short, at one point I noticed that my boots were starting to come apart.

Once I was settled in Kyoto for a while, done with hiking through the snow, and a watermelon themed thong frozen to the sidewalk not being my jam; I decided it might be worth trying to replace them with something more comfortable and less falling apart.

I stopped in at a shoe store in Osaka while I was waiting for the TeamLabs thing to open. Unfortunately Japanese people have rather small feet. They had a single shoe (well pair) that was a US size 12, and while I could get my foot in, just, it was pretty tight and not very comfortable.

After a bit a research on the internet it seemed like, barring a specialty shop in Tokyo that deals in enormous footwear, my best bet was a chain store called ABC-Mart.

ABC-Mart have a number of stores in and around the Kyoto train station, some of which are regular ABC-Marts and just carry shoes, and others which have names like Mega, which is larger, Sports, which just does sports shoes, and Grand Stage which seems to just be all the high end fancy shoes or something.

Regardless. Unfortunately, in store, the largest size they carry is 28cm (Japanese shoe sizes are in sensible numbers), which is a US size 10. (With the exception of that one branch in Osaka that had a single pair in size 12, seemingly in contravention of company policy) Fortunately, you can however order shoes in larger sizes off their website.

I had previously ordered online a $4 mini dp -> hdmi cable to plug the laptop into the monitor in the apartment (from Rakuten). Unfortunately I have no post box for the specific apartment and so they won't leave it if I'm not home (the courier told me this when he delivered the item). Fortunately when they missed me because I was out getting coffee (I get coffee before work most mornings from the coffee shop I mentioned previously) when they tried to deliver it I was able to arrange redelivery by fishing the missed delivery slip out of the padlocked mailbox for the complex (which they will post missed delivery slips in apparently) and booking redelivery (although I had managed to order the item by using a phone number consisting entirely of 1s, Unfortunately I needed a real phone number for the courier's web site. Fortunately the missed delivery slip had the drivers mobile number on it and I used that).

While losing $4 to an inability to get something delivered was one thing, I wasn't keen on losing shoe money. Fortunately as it turns out they have the option of getting the shoes delivered to a store for pickup.

Unfortunately, in order to register an account on their website, you need a valid phone number.

I was explaining my predicament to the owner/barista at the coffee store and, fortunately, she kindly offered the use of the phone number of the store to sign up for an account. Having done that, it unfortunately turned out that neither of my credit cards would work with the website. I would receive the "is this you buying stuff? here's a code" SMS from the bank, but upon entering it the transaction would be declined and the website said "please contact your bank".

Having spent an hour on hold for one of the banks, and about 45 minutes for the other, only to be told that they could see no indication that a transaction was being attempted and that "sometimes they work, sometimes they don't" and that I should contact the merchant (as though, even if I had conversational Japanese, I would be able to navigate a conversation about the technical reasons for a financial transaction failing), I did some more research.

You can get a Japanese credit card from a couple of places if you aren't a Japanese citizen.

Fortunately most mobile phone providers will grant one to a customer with a post-paid phone number. Unfortunately you can't get a phone number without a residency card.

You can get one with a bank account obviously. Fortunately without a residency card you can get a special type of bank account. Unfortunately what makes the account special is that it can only be used to make in person deposits or withdrawals in cash.

Fortunately there is one company, v-Preca, that will let you buy a virtual credit card online. Unfortunately neither of my credit cards work on their site. Fortunately you can also pay via bank transfer. Unfortunately see the restriction on in person usage above. Fortunately you can also buy the cards in convenience stores. Unfortunately the convenience store cards are only sold in values up to an amount less than the shoes cost.

Fortunately while I was in the convenience store buying snacks, I spotted a Vanilla gift card

This is a Visa gift card with a higher maximum value than the v-Preca card. Unfortunately t didn't work with the website either (it did give an error as soon as the card number was entered, so it seems the site can tell what sort of card it is from the number and refuses to even try charging it).

I was relating the latest in my story to the Barista and one of the other regular customers who also speaks English and I've met a few times now. They had a brief conversation in Japanese and then said to me "it is our mission to find you shoes". I exchanged emails with the customer and a day or two later he emailed indicating that he had called a shoe store and confirmed for me that they had large enough shoes in stock.

So I caught a train to a shopping mall in Minami-ku, which is the South ward of Kyoto, and is probably feels more like going to Werribee than still being in Kyoto proper.

I arrived and found the store and the lovely shop assistant eventually found the pair of Adidas shoes I had a been told about.

US size 14. They fit, if a little loosely.

As I was pondering if I just wanted to go shoeless instead of sporting a pair of bright red sneakers and had decided I was more or less resigned to my fate, the shop assistant came back and said that they also had a pair that was probably too small, but I was welcome to try them on (well, I imagine that' what she said because this whole thing was still being an ordeal of me not speaking Japanese and no one that works in as hoes store speaking English)