Wednesday, October 27, 2010

"Tall" is relative

Being "tall" is relative.

(click to enlarge)

Having been considered "on the short side" throughout university in Canada, I was pleasantly surprised when people in Japan thought I was pretty tall. People (usually old people, though) would actually use the adjective "tall" to describe me. It was really awesome . . . until I had to go buy shoes. Size 8 (about 25 cm in Japan), which I thought was pretty average, apparently is kind of big in Japan. I always got sent to the opposite side of the department store where they had "big" sizes and less variety, which kind of sucked. And then of course, Germany. Here, I'm just downright short. And when I borrowed my friend's girlfriend's bicycle in Denmark, I could barely touch the ground with my tippy toes with the seat lowered as far as possible.

Similarly, having a "high" tolerance is also relative . . . but that's for another day.

2 comments:

  1. yes! the display shoes in german shoe stores are regularly my size (vs size 6 here in canada), and the tokyo shoe stores didn't even have my size! but toshi and i found a store specifically selling big shoes in a tokyo train station! i love german shoe stores.

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  2. I love German shoe shops toooo! I went shoe-shopping with my mom the other day, and we literally went into 7 different shoe stores in an hour and a half or so. In the end I bought shoes from Camper (I have to admit I'm a Camper whore). I love it how size 8 is a nice, average size in most places outside of Japan.

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