Making samurai sandals in Saitama

by Holly

We signed up for this AirBnb experience about an hour north-ish from Tokyo. We spent the morning walking around a little in Shibuya - took in the hedghog cafe and had an excellent ramen for lunch. Becky stayed there to do some shopping while the kids and I took the train up to meet our host Mayumi at Mizuhodai station.



We were all tired because we didn't get home until like 2am the night before from our ghost stories in a country town expedition the night before in Hadano, southwest of Tokyo. The railway was still shut down after we finished there because of an accident with a car which happened when we were on the way down. Luckily we could take the train the other direction and eventually switch to a JR line going back toward Tokyo, but it took forever and we were on literally the last train of the night for every leg of our return journey.

Sandals woven from straw served as footwear for many people in Japan for at least a thousand years. They don't last very long, but the raw material was in abundant supply and they didn't take too long to make. Our host said horses even were shod sometimes with rice straw shoes. These would only last a day or two, but were pretty fast to make up so could be replaced continually.

Our host served us some dango balls and green tea while she gave us a short history of straw sandals in Japan. We then inspected some traditional waraji type sandals made of real straw; these are a design which tie on your leg and were used for work and travel.

The ones we made were woven from plastic rope rather than straw, and were a flip flop style called zōri. Mayumi had prepped some materials for us so we could actually finish our sandals within a few hours.

The main weaving part was something the kids could reasonably do themselves.

Various aspects of finishing and getting the foot strap integrated were tough for them but Child 1 got hers done and the host and I helped Child 2 and Buster.

Buster fell asleep face down on this pillow; as I mentioned we were all pretty exhausted from the previous day!

Buster's sandals ended up a bit short, but otherwise they all turned out pretty well.

On the way back to the station, our host took us to take a quick look at a nearby estate with historic buildings that was once the seat of the local daimyo.