A Student Nurse

I mentioned the issue of shoes-off in homes in conversation today. It was with a student mental health nurse who is working in our service.

I brought up the subject after talking a bit about my experiences in Japan. She was rather surprised at the idea of removing shoes in the hairdressers, as you would do in Japan, and was not keen on that idea. However, she didn't like people wearing shoes in her apartment and usually asked visitors to remove their shoes. She did admit to forgetting to remove her own sometimes though!

This student was black. It does seem like a lot of black people do prefer shoes-off in their homes. This seems true of African British, some Afro-Carribean British and African Americans, though I'm not sure how much of a norm it is among those ethnic groupings.