Silly me, when I arrived in Taiwan after being in Spain and the UK for the most part of the winter, I was wearing a Coat, a Vest, a Scarf, Gloves and my trusty Doc Martens… The moment I step down the plane, I immediately thought: - Fuck! Oh yeah! It’s a tropical Island. So I took off my coat and gloves. One minute later the heat was crazy, I took off the vest. By the time I was leaving my shit at the hotel I was fucking sweating my soul out.
So, yes, I needed to ditch my Doc Martens in order to get something that would help cope the heat that will only get worse and worse as summer approaches.
So I heard about this place with the colourful slippers I've seen a lot of the locals wear everywhere. Apparently at some point when plastic started being popular around these parts of the world there was a company making the Iconic Blue and White plastic flip-flops many locals can recognise as something everybody has worn at some point in their lives. A few years ago, this same company started producing many different colourful variations of the same flip-flops, and they were a hit, so I thought: -Let's get myself some of them slippers!
They are sturdy, comfortable and indeed, very fucking colourful, and the best part? Well that's got to be the price, you will leave the establishment with a shinny pair of new slippers and it will only set you back 100 NTD, oh yeah, around 2.5 EUR.
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| The Plastic Slippers |
Completely as a strike of faith, next door I found a traditional Geta shop. Geta are traditional Japanese wooden slippers, usually elevated from the ground and with fabric thong. They are usually worn with traditional Japanese outfits but lately you can see them with western clothes (resulting in a very weird-cool looking outfit), their elevation from the ground makes them ideal for rainy and snowy seasons, as they help keeping the feet and legs dry.
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| The Geta |
Geta were worn in Taiwan during the Colonial Period (1895-1945) and they were reserved to the nobility. It was only until after the Japanese left that the regular people got to wear Geta. They started being very popular, until the industrialisation of the country and the introduction of plastic manufacturing. Introducing the plastic slipper.
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| The thongs |
It is some how ironic to have a Geta shop right next to a plastic slipper shop, the rise and fall of a product represented in opposite sides of a wall. The popularity of Geta is rising again in Taiwan, specially amongst the youngsters looking back the ages to inspire them.
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| Detail of the Shop. |
So, after just a glimpse I knew that I needed to get my hands (or feet) on a pair of those bad boys. The drill is simple, you get there and choose amongst the several different styles of Geta, you tell the attendant your size and she will fetch the wooden base for you. Then you proceed to choose what kind of fabric you want for the thongs; there are literally hundreds of them to choose from and will make your combination of style and thong pretty unique. My choice? Burgundy cotton fabric with Manekki-Nekko (fortune cat) prints on them. The crafts man will then proceed to measure your feet and place the thongs and nail them to the slippers. After around 15 min you will have your Geta ready to be worn.
A tradition rising again, they are surprisingly comfortable and will last, without fear of mistakes, one hundred years.
Plastic Slippers
No. 316, Section 2, Xīmén Rd, Zhongxi District, Tainan City, Taiwan 700
Price: 100 NT (~2.5EUR)
Geta
No. 318, Section 2, Xīmén Rd, Zhongxi District, Tainan City, Taiwan 700
Price: 400-2000 NTD (~10-50 EUR)
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