“If you see a step up, it’s time to change your shoes,” said Llew Thomas, our tour leader, as we entered the guesthouse. Wooden geta sandals were lined up in a row but slipping into them was no easy feat. It required balance and dexterity to remove our boots and step up without touching the mud-flecked entrance floor again. Wearing the right footwear in the right place is huge in Japan; there are even special plastic sliders for the lavatory.
In the early 1960s a trio at the Rockefeller Institute started a bold experiment to change the way heroin addiction was treated, and they did so using a drug originally created by “the devil’s chemist”