A few months back, I spent five days in Tokyo. I went, in many ways, to confirm a strong suspicion: that it is indeed the greatest city in the world for quality shoes and boots. I have not been to every single other city! But I left confident that my hunch was correct.

I went with a video crew. 14 locations—workshops, factories, retail shops, and more—22 hours of footage, and approximately 1 million boots later, I quite regretfully had to go home.

To reminisce and to preview what’s to come, the handsomely knowledgable and ever-swell Phil Kalas of Ashland Leather and the Full Grain Podcast took over the Shoecast once again to interview me about my recent trip to the boots-and-shoes mecca. What resulted was nothing less than a deep-dive into city’s astounding footwear scene, why and how it exists, plus a preview of five upcoming feature videos that’ll be published on YouTube before too long.

Give it a listen or watch below!

And you can listen to this and every Shoecast episode on:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Stitcher

Check out the Shoecast archives right here

Or watch the episodes—and plenty of other wonderful stuff—that we’ve also put on our YouTube channel

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