Living in Japan is about following rules. (For comparison, living in Italy is about working around the rules). Today's rule is Garbage Disposal. In the households, one must distinguish among: "burnable", "non-burnable" (plastic), "resources" (PET/glass/paper).
Even at Mc Donald's:
The big companies with a zero-emission policy have up to 15 kinds of garbage:
It is not uncommon for your neighbours to open your garbage bag to check that you do it right. If not, your garbage will not get picked up, they will knock at your door or directly call your landlord. Therefore you must do this properly.
Seems like a well-thought and ordered system, doesn't it? But coming from abroad I can't help seeing the inconsistencies and having those hey-the-king-is-naked perceptions.
Garbage collection happens only once or twice per week: (note the sentence: please be aware that your manner of disposing of household garbage is one of the most important issues in the neighbourhood)
During the week trash must be kept inside the house:
The night before the established day, residents put the bags outside. There aren't garbage bins - trash bags stay for a night outside before collection. In my neighbourhood roads are large and well kept, but houses don't seem well built; most of them are wooden. It is obvious that in these conditions there are problems with rats and other undesired visitors. I wonder how the Japanese - which are very picky about hygiene issues, for example they wear a mask when they have flu - can stand these problems.
The solution strikes me as lightning obvious. Placing an advanced device called "garbage bin" in the streets would eliminate the rotting of trash on the apartments' terraces, the proliferation of the friendly pets and therefore the need for (unhealthy!) poisons and traps scattered through the house. But then again, maybe I can't grasp what is the logic behind this.
Oh, some good news. We got one (warning, this photo is rather crude ). Nevertheless, the very moment I took the photo of the terrace above, I saw another, bigger. War is not over yet.
(apologies for not posting photos of Japanese girls)