Temple dress, and the shoe problem nobody warns you about
The dress code is simple and widely misunderstood as being about modesty alone. Shoulders and knees covered, for everyone, men included. A scarf in your day bag covers most situations and weighs nothing.
The part that catches people is the shoes. You take them off, and not just at the door of the inner shrine — often at the edge of the whole complex. Which means you then walk across a stone courtyard, in bare feet, in the sun.
In May, in the south, that stone is hot enough to genuinely hurt. In winter in the north at six in the morning it is cold enough to be miserable. Either way you will do it for ten or fifteen minutes, not thirty seconds.
So: socks. A pair in your bag, specifically for this. They are allowed almost everywhere shoes are not, and they turn the single most uncomfortable recurring moment of a temple-heavy trip into a non-event.
The other half of the shoe problem is practical. Wear something you can get on and off standing up, without sitting down and without laces. You will do it eight times a day.
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