Good shoes are no good if they aren’t a good fit. Everyone knows that, of course, but most people have at least once bought a fine pair of footwear only to consign it to a cupboard because wearing the shoes was just too painful.

So it pays to know how to determine a proper fit -- or, if you’re particularly well-heeled, to have them custom-made.

The golden rule with ready-made shoes is to try them out -- and not just try them on -- before you buy. A brief walk on hard flooring is ideal.

A good-fitting pair of shoes will leave at least 1 cm of space at the toe. Push your toes right to the tip, if you can fit a pencil between your heel and the back of the shoe, they’re the right size.

Next, check if you can bend your toes and if the heel is stable. Beware of too much pressure on your insteps or friction against your ankle bones.

If you take your time over all of this and don’t let sales-minded staff put you off, chances are the pair will suit you adequately.

For a perfect fit, however, you may prefer to visit Takeo Kikuchi. At the age of 76, he’s been in the custom-order footwear business for 51 years and now works from his shop-factory in the Oji district of Tokyo’s Kita Ward.

Under his “full-order service,” Kikuchi will measure your feet precisely, then, based on these figures, cobble together a trial pair of shoes for you to test-wear for a week. After that, subject to any necessary adjustments, he’ll present you with the finished pair (plus the mold and trial pair) about two months after you first walked through his door.

You, in return, will need to present him with around 300,000 yen.

As a less expensive alternative, you may prefer a pair of Kikuchi’s ready-made shoes, to which he’ll happily make small alterations after you’ve tried them out. These range in price from 22,000 yen to 36,000 yen.

Still a pretty penny, Kikuchi admits, but, he says, “If you really care about your health, I believe my shoes are worth investing in.”