Shinzo Abel and Benjamin Netanyahu. Washington Post/AFP
I saw this and I figured I had to share it. Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu hosted Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe at a state dinner. Everything went fine until the dessert, which was served in a leather shoe. The Japanese were, predictably, mortified by the dessert. Japan is famous for being an anti-shoe culture where even at work people take their shoes off and it is considered incredibly rude to walk inside someone's house while wearing a shoe. (incidentally, when I visited there as a child, that was an adjustment for me as I regularly wore shoes inside at home) Serving a meal out of a shoe? Well I am guessing that will go over about as well as this did...
It's such an obvious faux pas that it is amazing to me that the chef didn't realize it and that the people that hired the chef, the Israeli government, didn't realize it either. I doubt it was intentionally insulting, after all, creative types can be somewhat silly, but you would think that someone would have saw this and figured out that it was probably a bad idea to serve this to a Japanese politician. Hell, if they had served it to an American one, I'd probably be wondering if it was an insult.
Anyways, I thought the whole incident was funny and I though I would share it. I don't think anything serious will come from this and it will probably be one of those dumb facts you see repeated in listicles and trivia in the future. Just a funny footnote in history.
And yes, I purposely avoided using a "foot in mouth pun" since everyone else was doing it!
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