Tabi: just do it

Having married a Japanese girl has taught me about the little things in Japanese home life I would have not noticed before. The sort of things that don’t seem “cool” or “zen”, in other words. Normally, socks would not be an interesting topic worthy of a blog, but today is an exception, as I hope to talk about Tabi (足袋). Often times around winter, my wife receives tabi socks over the years from her parents of various kinds and varieties. The distinctive feature is the separation between the big toe, and the rest, or in some cases, each toe has a separate “pocket”. This article does a nice job showing what contemporary tabi socks look like. My wife insists that tabi are better for your fee, but as I am a size 13 in the US (12 in the UK, 47.5 in the E.U., 31 in Japan), my feet are pretty darn big.¹ There are plenty of good shops in Japan that sell tabi socks, but what if you are foreigner with really big feet?

I found this online store, which sells equipment for Kyudo, and traditional uniforms including tabi. These are the traditional tabi socks, not the modern wool ones my wife gets, but as they sold to Westerners, the sizes available would more amenable. So, I decided to place an order anyway. The website is friendly, and the tabi arrived pretty sooner after after some extra order verification steps (they like to confirm shipping costs with customer before shipping, which is helpful).

Here’s my ugly feet in tabi socks, taken one night on my camera phone:

The first thing that struck with the tabi socks was the sole was tough and hard:

Traditionally tabi might be worn formally with wooden clogs or geta (下駄）, on flip-flops (zōri 草履), or on wooden floors, so that actually makes sense. I read in Wikipedia that construction workers typically wore a somewhat tougher version of tabi, because it gave them good traction in high places, but still have sensitivity to feel where they’re standing.

The other thing that struck me with geta was the hooks in the back:

With traditional tabi, you don’t just pull them over your feet like you do with socks, but instead they hook up in the back.

As for the socks themselves, I purchased the regular version, not the summer version, so the material is very thin and light, and seems to breathe well. I might go back and get the winter version too, or see if I can get regular tabi socks like my wife has. That is, assuming they sell size 31 socks, of course. Once you get used to the different feel than Western socks, they fit pretty loose and comfortable, though they definitely cannot be worn with shoes. These are strictly for just around the house for now. Compared to the slippers I have, which get sweaty,² these breathe better, but do get a bit cold in the winter.

Clearly more research is required.

P.S. Title of post is a bad parody of a certain major shoe company with the same slogan. Please pardon the silly title. The idea for this post has actually been sitting around in draft form for about a year when I lived in Ireland. When I came back to the US, I finally got around to ordering some socks and trying them out. Maybe I have too much time on my hands?

¹ My sister once had a fianceé who was Tongan, and far bigger than me. Not chubby, just BIG. I wonder how he would have fared in Japan, though sadly he is no more.

² Gross, I know. Sorry. :-p