Tabi: The shoe that became a sock and then a shoe again
one-from-nippon.ghost.io
one-from-nippon.ghost.io
Kanakuri pulled out midway through the race and was cared for by a local family. Embarrassed from his "failure", he silently returned to Japan without notifying race officials.
Although local newspapers at the time correctly reported that Kanakuri withdrew halfway through the race, the fact that Kanakuri had not officially reported back after doing so gave birth to humorous stories in Sweden about the supposedly lost Japanese runner.
In 1967, he was contacted by Swedish Television and offered the opportunity to complete his run. He accepted and completed the marathon, remarking,"Kanaguri of Japan is now in the goal. Time, 54 years and 8 months 6 days 5 hours 32 minutes 20 seconds 3, which will end the entire schedule of the 5th Stockholm Olympic Games," was announced. He commented "It was a long trip. Along the way, I got married, had six children and 10 grandchildren."
Specifically for clothes, the cost of "good quality" products could potentially be a lot more expensive, to the extent that the cost per wear is still better going with the cheap option and buying replacements more frequently. I only have one piece of anec-data which is a spreadsheet a coworker created to track this for themselves
The other thing this would seem to imply is that the total spending increases at some people as income goes down, as they have to pay for more lower quality things, but what I saw a graph of spending vs income (which I can't find again after some searching) that doesn't hold up in the data. That could mean that they're compensating for high costs of some things by spending less in other areas, I guess.
Being poor is still very much expensive. You can’t afford good insurance, you spend more money on repairing old things than buying new ones, you can’t afford education and credentials necessarily to get a good job, you can’t unwind to prevent burnout, you can’t take risks or spend time on side projects, you can’t quit terrible jobs because otherwise you’ll become homeless, constant depression about how life is unfair and anxiety about late payments impacts health and performance (which impacts university grades or job salary), extra things you must do like wait in like at the food panty and work extra jobs also impact health and performance, and more. It really is significantly easier to make money when you have money.
You need to read first-hand accounts of poor people from social media like https://reddit.com/r/povertyfinance and https://reddit.com/r/homeless to really understand (and yes, people lie and exaggerate on social media, and I see many instances of missing context and over-exaggeration on these subs, but the basic logic behind “being poor makes life much harder” very much checks out, and everything I mentioned above is 100% accurate. There are even former SWEs among the poor and even though they can avoid some of the pitfalls, they are nonetheless struggling the same)
I have been absolutely loving wearing these in colder, drier weather. Its an extremely minimal shoe- feels like being barefoot, They are too warm for warmer weather and they absorb water is wet weather. I dealt with wet weather by using sealskinz waterproof socks. I bought two sizes: a smaller size for just my foot and a bigger size to accommodate socks.
Same principle, but with single toes.
And then there are them:
So far I have used none of them, but different Five Finger shoes extensivly. I can recommend the general principle much, if you enjoy barefeet running, but not cutting your feet open.
I can also recommend Vibram five finger shoes for swimming where there are rocks or sharp shells or corals. They basically work like wetsuit feet with a great grip - and helps avoiding falls and cuts. Works both for summer and winter in my experience.
Ed: or just for wading/ crossing streams.
Sometimes in fact, 2 toes get into one, but it is actually not too uncomfortable, so maybe it would still work for you? There are many different models, some would probably be better suited as they are more flexible and wider, but I have no idea about the current models.
I am aware that climbing shoes are designed to be stiff to give you support, but I'm wondering if I can strengthen my feet enough and use something like this?
It sounds to me like several designs emerged at different stages from the same root idea, rather than a linear transition from one thing to the other.
Like I've written, the history of the tabi is long and complex, so it necessarily involves many changes and evolutions along the way.
Shojiro [...] "developed a new kind of tabi made of thick cotton and a rubber sole. They called this a jika-tabi (地下足袋) which loosely translates to “tabis that touch the ground”. This married their expertise in fabric tabis and their experiments with a material that was relatively new to Japan. And turned the sock turned back into a shoe."
So basically the most common variation in different times changed depending on available materials and these days cotton tabis are used only as part of traditional dresses.
And in the construction industry - which I think is very unique to Japan. Don't know of any other country that doesn't use shoes.
There are also newer entrants in the running shoes space, like the Toe-bi: https://www.kineyatabi.com/shop/tabi-running-shoes/toe-bi/
The regular ones are fantastic by the way. Very comfortable, insanely flexible and grippy. But they do tend to fall apart quickly. In AU they're very cheap, but more expensive for us.
Not only "shoes", they usually need to be conformant to local safety norms (EN ISO 20345 in Eu) that include a "hard point" (resistant to 200 joule or 20 kg falling from 1 meter height) and - usually - an anti-perforation layer underneath (those used in construction, at least here in Italy are either S1P or S3 type).
I went out this morning with a couple of dozen Japanese to do a dragon dance (Ryūjin) around the local village. Exactly like this one[1] from 8 years ago.
80% of the dancers were wearing tabi. I figured out why. Upon re-entering the community centre from where festivities are organised, tabi-wearers could just wipe their feet and enter. The rest of us had to hold that dragon while simultaneously removing shoes and stacking them.
Socially, tabi are the only acceptable in-and-out shoes/socks I have seen here.