Biography:Diane Clark lives and sorts trash in a rented Japanese mini-castle with her husband, a civilian teacher on a U.S. military base, and their two children. When she's not homeschooling her kids, Diane is writing essays, planning a new Asian adventure, soaking up some kind of culture, digging through her burgeoning bedside library, or working toward the title of Super-Homemaker. She also takes furtive photographs and aspires to be a crafter. Diane blogs about her varied interests at
http://dianeclark.typepad.com/popcorn_and_sushi/.
Trash Transgression
Husband came home recently sharing some news of particular absurdity (trust me, between working for the government and living in Japan, there's already plenty to go around): a fellow-American teacher who lives in our Japanese neighborhood told him she was informed that she had apparently committed something of a boo-boo, which was reported to the school by our neighborhood homeowner's association--huh, didn't even know we had one. Imagine their not inviting us to be members! Anyway, would you care to know her offense? It seems the garbage collectors complained that she had not wrapped up some "wet material" in her combustible (burnable) trash in newspaper before placing it into the approved trash bag. I know, the horror!
Any gaijin (foreigner) who stays in Japan for long learns that the Japanese have a special relationship with trash. There's very little landfill space in this small country, so there's lots of recycling and also plenty of trash-incineration. Now, this probably doesn't sound so bad and may in fact sound pretty good, especially since many areas have banned the burning of plastic, but it must be realized that this system puts something of a burden on the average citizen. In our city, everyone receives his or her own neighborhood's Trash Calendar, which tells in color-coded fashion exactly when each type of trash will be collected, every day of the year. Everyone sets their bags out before 8 a.m. in a central location on their street. No problem, right? Not until it comes to the actual disposal of the trash, which involves an intricate and sometimes messy separation process. In our neck of the woods, we're required to separate things in the following manner, and I'm simplifying here: burnable trash, soft plastic, PET bottles, white Styrofoam trays and colored Styrofoam trays, glass (not broken, though), cans, recyclable paper, newspapers, cooking oil, hazardous waste-type stuff, crockery items, things that are broken, small appliances that can be recycled, fabric, oversized items, and my personal favorite--that catchall known as metal/fragmental, which can include hard plastic items and things that are all- or part-metal. Some of these Trash Types are collected only once a month, and they must be "packaged" in a certain way in the right type of bag--not just any ol' plastic bag will do! Oh, and some things, such as PET bottles and white Styrofoam trays, must be carted to a local supermarket for disposal.
Head spinning yet? As I said, this is a gross over-simplification. When we first moved into our home, I, as Household Matron/resident Mama-san, actually had to attend Trash Class on base at the housing office. This was a time of instruction followed by verbal quizzing along these lines: "Does this sponge go in Plastic or Metal/Fragmental? How about this toothbrush? What about this metallic-coated chip bag? What are you supposed to do with plastic and Styrofoam food trays? Yes, that's right--wash them and hang them to dry!"
I doubt there's another country in this wide world where you're required to wash your trash before throwing it away. It boggles the mind. And consider our friend, flippantly unaware that all traces of semi-liquid matter must be housed within artfully wrapped paper packages prior to placement in the (approved) plastic bag.
Did I mention that this woman has lived here for TWENTY YEARS and never gotten in trouble? It turns out her husband had been away, and he's been the one to take care of the trash all these years. Guess she should've gone to Trash Class, too...
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