Ain't No Mountain High Enough

There’s something taboo in Japan about rubbish. Like it’s not supposed to exist in an unseparated form. I’ve been here for 10 days, and have seen as many open-top bins. I marvel at how streets stay spotless.

In NYC, we indiscriminately chuck any item into receptacles populating street corners and subway platforms (or onto the tracks to avenge MTA fare hikes). Here I fear caning for such an offense, so I am saddled with following stringent garbage protocol.

For example, take my apartment complex. Burnable materials are collected Monday and Thursday while non-burnable pickup occurs Wednesday. Thursday is resources day, and Friday the men wash their hands of the stinky stuff. Hefty Cinch Sack hasn’t caught on here. Instead, plastic grocery bags are piled in a designated area, which prevents putting out bags in advance of the designated day. In fact, the only acceptable time to curb rubbish is between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. the morning of collection.

If you are anything like me, you barely have enough time to rub on the pit stick before dashing off to work. Thus, the narrow window of opportunity slams shut when I'm in the shower, and my trash heap multiplies. To prevent stinking up my 13 sq. meter apartment, I’ve resorted to stuffing banana peels, edamame skins and empty soy sauce packets inside Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) sushi containers. To outfox roaches always on the take, I let my fridge double as a garbage can for these now encased organics. Garbage now occupies more shelf space than does fresh food. Anyone know the Japanese word for “baking soda?”

So what’s preventing me from mastering this advanced art of curbside collection? Well, you could spend half a day making sure your disposal is up to snuff. Garbage must be contained in tied TMG (no idea) semi-transparent bags and placed outside on the correct hour of the correct day. The landlord confirms that disposal “is one of the most important issues in the neighborhood.”


Scare tactics spur compliance: “If the garbage is not properly separated, it will not get picked up and it will be returned to you promptly.” How prompt – 8:05 a.m. prompt? Maybe the Tokyo sanitation men could serve as a backup alarm clock. Since instructions specify all but inking name and apartment number on the bags, these workers had better correlate those addictive Country Ma’am Chocochip Caffe Latte [sic] cookie wrappers as originating from apartment #208B. Each pog-sized cookie is individually wrapped, which defies ecological logic since I devoured the entire box in one sitting.

Fortunately crib sheets exist for clueless gaijin. Metals, ceramics, and rubber are non-burnable as is kitchen garbage, which must be “drained off thoroughly.” Umm, okay. Light bulbs must be wrapped in the packaging of the replacement. What’s next, bundling dental floss? Clothes count as burnable, just not leather ones. Paper diapers are of course burnable with the caveat to “remove excreta in advance.” And put it where? Back where it came from? In the “resources” pile to make fertilizer? Good thing Hicca and I have nine months to figure this one out.

Why can’t Tokyo mimic NYC and export trash to Odaiba, their geographical equivalent of Staten Island, an island built on reclaimed land. Or ship it to neighboring Yokohama, the city across the bay (think NJ).

The point of this post is that last week my garbage reached a critical mass. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Under the cover of darkness, my trash bag and I stole into a nearby park beneath Highway 9 (for some reason many parks are under overpasses).

Locals smoked on benches or walked dogs. Nervously swinging my bag of taboo goods, I approached a rare but overflowing public trashcan gleaming in the moonlight. I had to make it fit; the next can was probably kilometers away.

A naughty school girl stared at me. The dirty magazine was still moist from the afternoon rain. I picked it up, and in one motion pushed my bag down top of the others, setting the mag back on top as a lid. My burden lifted, but cheeks red with shame, I made a beeline for the nearest exit.

This week I’m not going back to the park. So if you’ll excuse me, tomorrow is non-burnable day, and I’ve got some sorting to do.


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Update: I wasn't kidding. This article is on the money about the obsessive Japanese mentality: Waste Watchers