I'm not usually one to care about immersion, but this is a serious problem.

[TouchandFeel]

In many, if not most Japanese public spaces and homes that require you to take your shoes off before entering, people don't go barefoot and actually wear indoor house slippers.

So, if this is such a serious problem to you, just simply take off your foot gear everytime you go in and tell yourself the sandals you have on are your house slippers.

There problem solved.

On the topic of Kugane and real-world influence, anyone else chuckle when they saw that the foreigner district was named Ijin-gai.