Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20191006-what-japan-can-teach-us-about-cleanliness

by pseudolus • 7 years ago

223 181 7 years ago

I really admire the cleanliness, I wish the US had more of this. (It should stop short of the face masks, though. That's a step too far for me.)

protomyth• 7 years ago

I don't know, during flu season I wish the folks who won't stay home would wear some masks. They don't always guess right with the flu shot.

electriclove4• 7 years ago

Sadly, we'll never have this in the US. (Many) people don't think of it as their bus, their street, their town, their country. (Many) people don't follow the rules and aren't aware or don't care about how their actions affect others.

To be clear, this isn't just a US problem, pretty much all countries that I've visited (just a sampling to be sure) are like this including other Asian countries. Japan really stands out as being different in this respect. I hope it can stay that way.

Reason077• 7 years ago

Sadly, this is the opposite of the UK cultural attitude. Kids here learn that cleaning up is someone else’s responsibility. Littering becomes a habit from an early age.

Even compared to Americans, we are terrible litterers. You can see this in people’s behaviours in fast food restaurants: in the US (as in many other countries), customers will bin their food wrappers and return their tray when they leave. Even groups of kids will typically do this: it’s just habit. In the UK, typical customers will just leave their mess at the table when they leave. Cleaning is someone else’s job.

Aperocky• 7 years ago

Whoa, that sucks. Out of curiosity, do people in UK tip? In the states, if there's no tip, then it is expected for the customer to clean up after themselves.

lol768• 7 years ago

Out of curiosity, do people in UK tip?

Not in a fast-food restaurant, no.

You'll often see folks in cafés help out and return their trays, but it's not a guarantee - and in some establishments it's not even possible for you as a customer to do this. At the end of the day, you're paying to sit down - and clearing your table afterwards is priced into the food offer.

Fast food is a bit more of a grey area, since there's not necessarily table service. I'd throw away my rubbish at e.g. Burger King - there's usually bins provided for this purpose.

williamdclt• 7 years ago

There's usually a 12.5% service charge in restaurants, but I've rarely seen tipping (I'm a foreigner living in London)

theboulevardier• 7 years ago

In the UK, we generally tip for a great service. If I buy a meal and the food and service is just fine, then no tip. Though if the food and service are great, I will generally tip 10 - 20% depending on how generous I'm feeling at the time. Tips generally aren't expected, and you won't be shamed if you don't tip.

I would clean up after myself somewhere like McDonalds or Burger King, though in a cafe or restaurant I wouldn't. In a restaurant I usually put the plates together to make it easier for the waiter or waitress to clear the table and try not to be too messy.

hanoz• 7 years ago

It's kind of a class thing though, and not down traditional class lines. There are a lot of families for whom littering would be completely out of the question.

seanalltogether• 7 years ago

Oh man this is so true and one of the big things that really stuck out to me when I first moved here. In the states i was used to seeing trash along the highway, but walking down city streets are relatively clean. Here in the UK when i walk down the street I'm now used to seeing tons of plastic bottles and empty crisp packs in the hedges. And you completely nailed it, cleaning is someone elses job.

dredmorbius2• 7 years ago

The IRA is in part to explain.

daddylonglegs• 7 years ago

I was driving in Britain with a friend from New Zealand and he said how shocked his family was at the litter in Britain. He mentioned a UK tourist family who were rude and uncouth and became notorious for their "rampage" through NZ. Their greatest sin, and the one that first got them publicity, was littering.

chrisseaton2• 7 years ago

Cleaning is someone else’s job.

Well... yeah if you're eating in a restaurant, then yes it literally is someone else's paid job to clean your table. That's what makes it a restaurant.

Do you also criticise people who go to a restaurant and expect someone else to cook their food?

Or people who get a taxi and then expect someone else to drive?

alkonaut2• 7 years ago

In a fast food restaurant where there is a bin where customers are supposed to throw their trash then I’m assuming I’m actually not paying to have it done.

That is: there isn’t staff enough to handle it, and those that leave their tray just ensure that prices go up (since they are using a service they didn’t pay for).

I have never left a tray in a fast food restaurant in 40 years.

wst_5• 7 years ago

I remember the shock of moving from Tokyo to London. Despite of London not being the dirties of the cities I saw in my life, the gap is huge. Litter is everywhere even when the trash bin can be found close by. People do not respect public places, walking with your shoes on benches is normal, no one removes their shoes anywhere (example: I even saw people walk with shoes on in the soft play area where small kids are crawling touching and licking everything around,) toilets in restaurants are so dirty that I try to avoid using them if I can help it, dog's poop on the pavement, tons of bubble gum on the pavement, too. The drop that overfilled the cup was seeing bunch of young people walking from pub to pub, one of them left with glass half of beer in his hand (red flag already,) drunk few more times, and threw the glass with the beer, what's left of it, in the flowery spot. In the city center, middle of the day. It's so depressing...

freyir• 7 years ago

Sounds like San Francisco. Just swap dog poop with human poop, and a glass of beer with a needle of heroin.

fiblye2• 7 years ago

Undiluted orientalism.

I was in Osaka this weekend and litter is everywhere. By far one of the dirtiest major cities I’ve seen in East Asia. In the city I live in in Japan, the rice fields are full of coffee cans, plastic bottles, and bento packaging thrown out from cars. Streets are covered in cigarette butts and somehow I see natto containers in the middle of nowhere. Going hiking, I see tea bottles and plastic bags from convenience stores all over the damn place.

Most parts of Tokyo and cities with tourism are generally clean because there are heavy cleanup operations. People are still littering just like everywhere else.

Invisible dirt – germs and bacteria – are another source of concern. When people catch colds or flu, they wear surgical masks to avoid infecting other people.

But you’ll never catch people washing their hands and grandpas always pull down their mask to cough so as to not dirty it. I caught a news program during flu season last year telling people how to avoid the flu. Their recommendations? Keep your stomach wrapped and extra warm, and drink green tea since it cures influenza.

claudeganon2• 7 years ago

I was in Osaka this weekend and litter is everywhere

While I generally agree, the funny part about this is that it’s not uncommon in Japan for people to refer to people from Osaka as being “not Japanese.”

fiblye2• 7 years ago

True. Japanese people outside of Osaka generally disown Osaka.

They also completely disown their litter. It’s always foreigners, even if it’s natto boxes.

kimjongtrill• 7 years ago

i see every country has its own florida

scruple2• 7 years ago

Osaka really is _different_ in a tangible sense. They seem to buck the conservative/traditional trends as a point of pride. That said, 2 of the most disgusting (public) bathrooms I've ever had the displeasure of stepping into were in Osaka. That's been a sticking point for me and it's come up in conversation nearly every time I have a conversation about Japan. I thought Osaka was fun, and it has a great culture, but you need to be prepared for it's reality if you are in Tokyo or Kyoto first.

cumwolf• 7 years ago

that's very fascinating, as someone who has only experienced Tokyo, I was amazed with how clean it was compared to other Eastern Asian cities (I lived in Shanghai). Wouldn't have guessed it was a bit of smoke and mirrors.

coldtea3• 7 years ago

Or the parent's comment is a big of exaggeration to downplay the general cleanliness.

Compared to most major global cities it's night and day.

I'd take a hard look on NY, Chicago, L.A, London, Paris, Amsterdam, before I complain like the grandparent about the Japanese situation which is an order of magnitude better...

Tokyo of course is on a league of its own, but here's Osaka Street View, go around, how does it compare to what you read?

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.675107,135.5261238,3a,75y,27...

Frost1x• 7 years ago

First thing I noticed after leaving the train from the airport to Shinjuku is just how crazy clean everything was. It was certainly impressive and most of the city I visited followed suit. I spent time actively looking for trash with little success, quite different than every other city I've been to in the world. Even unpopulated areas (wilderness, forests, remote parks) you wouldn't expect to see much trash always seem to have trash.

At night time I did see quite a bit of beer cans/bottles around, however, either people or cleanup crews seemed to group them together to make cleanup easier.

If this is due to cleanup operations, I feel other cities around the world should consider such logistics because it makes travel there one of the most pleasant experiences I've had.

nnutter• 7 years ago

Those surgical masks may not be doing much either due to improper use. As they get wet due to moisture in the breath they become less permeable causing more of the air to be vented out the sides rather than through the membrane. Perhaps this could still decrease the radius of infection even in this suboptimal state.

samus• 7 years ago

Just curious, are surgeons actually changing masks during long surgeries?

whiddershins• 7 years ago

Maybe the explanation is a bit overwrought but it’s a fact that Tokyo is astonishingly clean, and I never once saw someone drop large trash in the street, even though there aren’t bins.

That could be as simple as broken windows theory but the contrast with Brooklyn is striking.

The cultural attitude difference is real to some degree. People tend to smoke while standing in one place, a designated smoking area outside with an ashtray, not walk and smoke. This is a huge difference and reflects a priority on not annoying people around you.

That’s just one of many example I could give of what are obviously and viscerally differences in habit, custom, and perspective about consideration for strangers.

mnky9800n• 7 years ago

That's because you separate your trash and put it in bins in your building

kylorhall3• 7 years ago

There's no bins on the street because Japanese people rarely eat, drink, smoke, etc while moving, though Starbucks/etc has changed that a little bit, but I rarely see those discarded.

You just don't have any trash to drop, you'd keep it in your bag if you did, and there's bins at konbini or vending machines everywhere.

Today, like most days, on the news they had more videos of Rugby tourists passed out on the street, replaying the subway video, etc. This time they had a segment about gaijin putting out cigarette butts with their shoes and walking off for like 5 minutes.

Haven't seen it any worse than the Rugby World Cup.. I don't want to be around for the Olympics.

netsharc• 7 years ago

I was in Tokyo and Osaka these last weeks, and China before Tokyo. Landing in Tokyo after China was magical. People didn't shout in public or have their phones blaring. They let people disembark trains instead of just barging in as soon as the train doors open, and they queue neatly for those doors. And yes everything was clean and tidy.

But the touristy area of Osaka was back to being dreadful. People cutting you off while walking, groups stopping in the middle of the way, often with their rolling suitcases blocking more of the path. I noticed there were many Chinese tourists (from the language with which they were shouting at each other..).

I don't agree that the lack of litter is only due to the cleanup. The Japanese in general follow the rules as expected, like I wrote above with queueing and putting their phones on silent mode.

tasogare3• 7 years ago

People didn't shout in public or have their phones blaring.

Yet Japan is a very noisy country. Store clerks shouting irasshaimase like robots, speaking elevators, politians in campaign and their cars with mega-phone, etc. added to paper thin (sometimes literally) walls make it sometime painful to live here.

88840-8855• 7 years ago

Some cultures are quieter than others. Chinese (25+ rural) are already as loud as a jetliner, only can be topped by Spanish tourist girls. If you survive that encounter, you have heard it all!

ekianjo• 7 years ago

because there are heavy cleanup operations

Glad to see someone finally repeating what I have been saying forever about Japan. It's clean because there is an army of people cleaning the place every single day. Multiple times a day.

baxtr• 7 years ago

At least someone in their society cares

christiansakai• 7 years ago

I believe by people you mean tourists but not the locals

rjf72• 7 years ago

Does Osaka have the same school cleaning culture with a meaningfully large number of schools? In particular I know some schools in Japan (not sure what percent) do not even employee janitors because of this culture of cleaning responsibility.

It'd be an interesting way to test/refute the obvious hypothesis that the article is promoting. If the answer is yes, then the hypothesis can, more or less, be rejected.

briandear2• 7 years ago

Chinese public schools have the kids clean the school as well.

tlear• 7 years ago

I live in Japan as well.

Hiking.. have you actually hiked anywhere in else in the world? Most places you can fill a garbage bag in an hour just walking on a trail. Took my climbing friends from Canada on a long Hike in Kita Alps, they brought a garbage bag as they always do to gather other peoples trash. We managed to find 2 empty water bottles in 3 days having covered close to 50km. See the campsites near huts after people leave in the morning they are EMPTY.

Try camping at a car camp sites.. now compare that to the clusterfuck of drunks, blaring music, trash, puke piss, shit that you get in NA. Went to Ishikawa for a week this summer camped by the sea, huge camp site tons of people actually very nice. Same thing in US? God fucking help you. This is why they actually don’t have assigned lots for tents, in Canada people would get killed every long weekend if anyone was dumb to try that(car camping)

Of course there is garbage in cities in some places but compared to vast majority of the world it is clean. They actually clean public toilets.. it is a miracle.

blhack• 7 years ago

Where do you camp otherwise where you are seeing all this trash? Even in developed sites I don’t think I’ve ever seen what you are describing here. Definitely nothing even remotely like that once you get a little further from the trail.

There are a couple of places where people have left shotgun shells that I can think of around some of the 4 wheeling areas around Phoenix, but it’s nowhere near any sort of hiking trail.

joeberon• 7 years ago

Just want to say I’ve hiked significantly across the UK and there is extremely little litter

briandear2• 7 years ago

San Francisco Bay Area hiking areas seem really clean to me.

verttii• 7 years ago

Trails in Finland are spotless. But I guess that's cos there's just not many people to begin with.

Freak_NL• 7 years ago

Bugger me for living in a country with no mountains at all.

Japan's Alps really are quite something. Leaving the area cleaner than you found it is taken quite seriously by Japanese hikers.

I've hiked in the Southern Alps, including up Kitadake, Japan's second highest mountain, during my stay there as a graduate student. The occasional views you get of Mount Fuji standing far out in the plains are breathtaking! I joined a hiking group at the university I was staying at, which proofed a rewarding way to get to know Japan's hiking culture.

To be fair though, as soon as you leave the family-friendly day-trip hiking trails leading from the valleys to mountain hotels/restaurants well below the treeline in Europe's Alps behind and get to the trails that require at least a minimal amount of preparation and gear the story is much the same. People clean up after themselves, and pick the incidental wrapper or bottle lost by others along the way. People who hike up a mountain are on the whole a lot more respectful of nature and personal responsibility.

h1d3• 7 years ago

I'm in Tokyo but you sound like it's clean only because others clean up after people litter freely but that is absolutely not the case here...

People don't throw when it's clean, like how the NY subway changed.

I've never seen people pull down mask to cough in the middle of others.

You sound like running a negative campaign.

corey_moncure• 7 years ago

Things are changing.

15 years ago, it wasn't like this. As recently as 8 years ago you started seeing people exhibiting blatantly antisocial behavior in public, littering, not giving way in the roads, noisy devices, etc. When they open their mouths you realize they are not Japanese. The frequency of such encounters has increased steadily with time.

I was in the area last year and was shocked at how bad it's gotten. Rokko-san, trashed. Garbage bags ripped open and left to lay on the streets of Osaka. It's unbearably sad to see this happening.

CapricornNoble3• 7 years ago

>>By far one of the dirtiest major cities I’ve seen in East Asia.

Compared to which other cities? Bangkok, Manila, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City all make even the dirty parts of Japan look like a surgical suite. Seoul, Taipei, and Hong Kong are kinda okay, roughly equivalent to Tokyo when it's a little dirty.

chvid2• 7 years ago

As a Dane travelling abouts I have been stuck how clean the following three countries seemed compared to my home country: Australia, Singapore, and Japan.

hannob• 7 years ago

As a German I can assure you Denmark is far above the average in Europe in public space cleanliness :-)

PopeDotNinja• 7 years ago

As a San Francisco resident, I can say almost any major Western city is cleaner. SF is filthy, at least in the downtown areas. Every sidewalk needs a good power washing and there's poop everywhere.

LIV2• 7 years ago

Which part of Denmark? I am an Aussie living in Sweden but travel to Copenhagen every now and again and haven't noticed any mess

chvid2• 7 years ago

Copenhagen.

I would say the big difference is that in Australia (or least Brisbane where I was) laws against littering are actually enforced. And public drinking is a lot more regulated.

yibg• 7 years ago

Singapore seems to have a reputation for being very clean. But being here now after Tokyo there is no comparison. The amount of litter and general cleanliness of the sidewalks are much worse here compared to Tokyo.

DavidVoid• 7 years ago

I think it's worth noting that all of Japan isn't as clean as many of the cities are. A lot of people's homes are still rather dusty and when I visited in 2012 the outskirts of Osaka and the countryside looked pretty similar to Europe in terms of how much trash there was in the ditches next to the road.

The cities were noticeably cleaner than Swedish cities though, a lot fewer chewing gums and cigarette butts from what I remember.

franciscop2• 7 years ago

Except Shibuya, we walked there yesterday after the typhoon and had to avoid the big rats that normally live in the big trash piles, probably they were looking for food since yday there was no trash. I've seen similar situation with crows.

This is a mostly invisible issue for tourists since trash collection happens in the morning and people take the trash out the night before, so the piles of trash and animals are visible at night mostly.

And they then enter the convinis (warning, gross rats inside convini):

https://twitter.com/Ginkai19990324/status/115807601769873408...

aikinai• 7 years ago

I don’t think putting trash out at night and picking it up early in the morning is an exception to cleanliness. What else would they do? No one’s trying to say Japan produces no trash.

franciscop2• 7 years ago

But I'm taking about having big trash bags piled on the street for 12+ h practically everyday. For instance, an easy solution would be to put them only 2-3h before the trash trucks come (I've seen them before the last train at ~11pm, the truck comes at 9am). A cultural-change would be to have big metal containers to put the trash away so that animals don't have an easy way in.

pjdemers• 7 years ago

There are street cleaners in Japan. I used to visit Tokyo often and I would go running just before dawn. I saw plenty of people (usually elderly) collecting trash and sweeping up.

kylorhall3• 7 years ago

A lot of shop and home owners clean the street infront of their land. After a typhoon recently I saw what I assumed was the manager of the Louis Vuitton (or similar) store sweeping the front of the shop as a ton of branches had fallen (probably took him 30 minutes or more, it's a very wide sidewalk).

electriclove4• 7 years ago

Interestingly, I saw people using rakes to clean up as opposed to noisy blowers. We've got tons of people 'cleaning' in the US but show me a decent sized city than can compare with the cleanliness in Tokyo.

tw1010• 7 years ago

Insert mandatory "Don't forget that [Country other than the US]'s [positive traits] comes at a cost of loss of [american value]" here.

What'll it be this time? Communism? Authoritarianism?

Merrill• 7 years ago

When I was in grade school, students took turns cleaning and maintaining the school. It was also a lesson in democracy, since we had a meeting every month, run according to regular procedure, where students were elected to the various jobs such as sweeping the floor, washing the blackboards, cleaning the erasers, emptying the wastebaskets and burning trash, maintaining the outhouses, and pumping and bringing in drinking water.

Alas, this is one of the American values we have lost.

jaynetics• 7 years ago

The cleanliness is impressive, but what impressed me even more was the efficiency.

One morning in Tokyo, I saw construction workers starting to dig up a street. It was a large operation, they were exposing some massive pipes, and there were a few policemen, politely pointing pedestrians to a way around the site.

In the evening I went the same way again, to see how far they had gotten with the digging. However, there was no hole anymore. They were already done, and the street looked like new, with hardly a trace of what had happened.

I felt kinda bad about my place (Germany), where this would have taken at least a week.

mrmonkeyman• 7 years ago

You don't know if it was:

A) just an inspection B) regulated to the same degree as in Germany (i.e. digging a hole and covering it up is easy if don't have rules) C) succesful D) done properly

munmaek2• 7 years ago

Those are some rude assumptions, frankly. Yes they must be not as civilized as great Germany.

scarejunba2• 7 years ago

Somehow, I suspect B, C, and D are spurious concerns.

an_ko• 7 years ago

Speaking of 1 week: That's how long it took to repair this big sinkhole in front of Hakata main railway station in 2016, underground utilities and all. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/15/japan-fixes-va...

Symbiote• 7 years ago

You would find the same in Central London, but not somewhere suburban.

It's more a function of the size of the city, at least in rich countries with a functioning public service.

nitrogen• 7 years ago

San Francisco streets seem to take years to be repaired.

Ftuuky• 7 years ago

In Portugal it would have taken at least 2 months and the end result would be worse than before.

jaclaz• 7 years ago

Same in Italy, but with a twist, the actual work is actually done in two or three days, at the most four of five, but one day per week and a couple of weeks when noone is on site.

crimsonalucard• 7 years ago

Don’t feel bad, in San Francisco it took them 1 year to fix the 24th st. Bart escalator. 1 year. It’s pathetic.

axaxs• 7 years ago

It's as bad if not worse in the US. There are plenty of national examples, so I'll just tell of a local one. Where I live, recently they decided to repair 3 sidewalk squares. I figure I alone could have done this in a few hours, a day at most. The crew of 3 spent the first day taping off the sidewalk. Day 2 tearing up one square. Day 3 tearing up the other 2 squares. Day 4 pouring one square. Day 5 pouring the other 2 squares. Day 8(after weekend) removing the caution tape. Six working days for one very tiny project.

Tempest19812• 7 years ago

On Hwy 101 near Facebook, it seems like the roads have been under construction for maybe 1 year? And 2-3 years near University Ave.

I wish we could invent some super-efficient equipment that makes road-building/construction 10x faster...

choonway2• 7 years ago

Q:Why is Singapore so clean and tidy?

A:Because there is a horde of foreign workers doing the cleaning up.

clSTophEjUdRanu• 7 years ago

Aren't violators caned as well? Singapore was awesome when I visited. Incredibly clean. Even lower class areas like around Orchard Towers (four floors of _____) was well above board compared to a clean US City.

choonway2• 7 years ago

no they are not caned. instead they are made to put on the high visibility vests with the words 'Corrective Work Order' and made to pick rubbish. But they are a rare occurrence. Usually only a composition fine.

ensiferum• 7 years ago

It isn't clean at all tho. For a place that on paper has hefty fines for littering the city is a dump.ok sure enough the inner city center is quite clean but you only have to travel 5-6 stops away for exampleto Lavender (Indian neighbor... Hehehe) and it's a total dump with trash all over the streets.

davidmurdoch3• 7 years ago

American (US) in Tokyo for the first time here. About an hour ago (10:30 pm here) I saw two men with a bucket and washcloth scrubbing the floor right next to Shibuya Crossing ("the busiest crosswalk on the world"). Moments before that a man was sweeping a walkway between passer-bys). The clothing store withers swept each changing room in between guests. Though a block away was the smoking area, littered with thousands of cigarette butts (not sure what conclusion to draw about smokers).

I was in Osaka earlier in the week, and Kyoto after that. And these cities were also quite clean and orderly, with Osaka being the most orderly (and much more relaxed and slow paced, which makes order easier).

One of my favorite parts of Japan's cleanliness is their cars. They are all sparkling. Even the delivery trucks are shiny and splatter free! The gas/petrol station near me had at least two attendeds at each car, one to pump, and the other to clean the car's windows and paint!

Another fascinating thing is how escalators have two lanes, one for walking and one for standing. Why doesn't everyone so this?! It's so perfect!

Others in this thread don't speak too highly of Osaka, but it was definitely the most orderly and trash free of the three cities I've visited. Of course, these cities are quite huge, compared to cities in the US, so perhaps these conversations should be more fine grained, generalizing by prefecture rather than city.

I've found that I've been lining my things up neatly, and organizing my clothes and toiletries here in my in my hotel. It's been inspiring to see all the order here.

dmoy3• 7 years ago

Another fascinating thing is how escalators have two lanes, one for walking and one for standing. Why doesn't everyone so this?! It's so perfect!

Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just having everyone stand. So not exactly perfect I guess.

But yea I agree in the general matter. When my MIL (a master organizer) visited Japan she thought that was great.

electriclove4• 7 years ago

That's generally the custom in the US as well.

dilap2• 7 years ago

Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just having everyone stand

Wait, what? How can this be true?

Imagine an escalator w/ both lanes filled with people just standing. Now imagine the left lane starts walking: clearly, higher throughput.

Now, maybe you're imagining a scenario where people don't want to walk. Now everyone stands on the right, and the left lane is completely empty. OK, now we've reduced throughput by half compared to "everyone standing".

So as we consider moving between the extremes of "no walkers" and "walker saturation", there will be some break-even point of throughput. And beyond that having a walking lane will be more efficient.

(Also, besides raw throughput, having a walking lane gives you a better "fastest possible traversal time", which is also valuable, for people in a hurry.)

davidmurdoch3• 7 years ago

Even if it does reduce throughput, which from what I've seen comes in waves (after disembarking a train), the people who are okay standing there get to stand without being pushed, while those that are in a hurry get to hurry without pushing. Not everything has to be at max efficiency all the time, sometimes the optimal solution is relative.

unrealhoang• 7 years ago

I guess, that set up is optimized for latency and not throughput, which really makes sense.

electriclove4• 7 years ago

You might enjoy this: https://www.netflix.com/title/80209379

scruple2• 7 years ago

Each time I've been to Osaka it has been remarkably different than the other cities we traveled to in Japan. It may come down to timing. My wife and I have only visited Japan during times of Japanese festivals.

austhrow743• 7 years ago

Escalators having two lanes is a thing in tons of places. Generally the larger the city, the closer to the cbd you are, and the more rush hour it is, the more likely it is to be a thing that everyone does.

chmod775• 7 years ago

Another fascinating thing is how escalators have two lanes, one for walking and one for standing. Why doesn't everyone so this?! It's so perfect!

I wish they'd just draw lines on escalators in Germany already. Keeping the left side of the escalator free and standing on the right is an unwritten rule here, but about one in twenty stand on the left anyways (tourists? people lost in thought?).

In the morning I often want to catch a connecting train that departs only about minute later, and pretty much every time I have to ask one or two people to step aside so I can pass. The fastest way to reach the other platform happens to be by means of two escalators. Other people who have been to Berlin Friedrichstraße station probably know which escalators I'm talking about.

The fastest way I have found of getting people to step aside is startling them with a firm "SORRY!" - works on tourists as well as Germans.

When I see more than three people on the left side I usually just give up though. By the time they'll have sorted themselves out the train will probably be gone anyways and I don't fancy breaking into a sprint just to make up for the lost seconds. I'd rather suck it up and wait a few minutes for the next train while getting a coffee on the platform.

I guess what I'm saying is that something as simple as two lines on escalators can make a difference of ten minutes or more in the commute of some people.

goranmoomin• 7 years ago

Well, as a Korean, I think that this is due to the difference of importance of how other people think me. I've heard that the western world is very individualistic, and people in general don't care much about how other people acts.

In Korea (and AFAIK Japan too), people very care of what other people think about them. They consider the consequences of every action carefully. One of the results is that people generally don't litter in front of other people, and that makes the city clean. The places without much people, they are dirtier than others because there aren't other people around them.

munmaek2• 7 years ago

Having lived in 세종시, and Seoul, I strongly disagree with your statement.

Sejong is a brand new city, made in 2014, yet there was litter everywhere, especially right near bus stops. I distinctly recall seeing empty coffee cups tossed in the planters/hedges nearby.

There were almost zero trash cans so what do you expect. The bathrooms didn’t have tissue or anything either, you had to go to one of the nearby stores or cafes and get some.

Seoul has plenty of dirty areas just like any other enormous city.

People litter everywhere. Some Japanese people may be more conscious about not littering, but so are some Americans! This article reeks of orientalism.

seanmcdirmid• 7 years ago

Japan has a lack of trash cans also. The idea is to get people to think about their waste and carry it home. It goes hand in hand with their hyper recycling culture, which I could never really figure out what bin to put stuff in on my last visit.

pcr910303• 7 years ago

Sejong is a brand new city, made in 2014, yet there was litter everywhere, especially right near bus stops.

Mostly due to people who wait at the bus stops alone; I've never seen people littering at the bus stops at the rush hour, but I've definitely seen people leaving their empty coffee cups on the benches when (they think) nobody's looking.

There were almost zero trash cans so what do you expect.

That's mostly because of the stupid decision of that trash cans 'look' dirty, which causes the broken window effect... but IMO that was a stupid decision.

The bathrooms didn’t have tissue or anything either, you had to go to one of the nearby stores or cafes and get some.

Hmm, that's not what I experienced, I've rarely seen public bathrooms without any tissue.

viking1992• 7 years ago

My experience visiting small town Japan (1990s) is that there were several improvised garbage dumps, so Japanese are indeed pigs when nobody is watching.

piracyde25• 7 years ago

They consider the consequences of every action carefully.

I believe that is what Shintoism teaches.

martin_henk• 7 years ago

Because everybody does their 5cents here... not 50dollars or 5 dollars. Just THEIR 5cents

danielfoster• 7 years ago

On a trip to Japan last year I posed a similar question to a friend-- why restrooms so much cleaner in Japan? I'm constantly amazed at how few many in the United States don't flush the toilet in public bathrooms.

My friend concluded that much of it had to do with collectivism vs individualism. Either way I think Americans need to improve their bathroom etiquette.

multani3• 7 years ago

I was cycling in Japan for about 2 weeks, just a few weeks ago. I was also impressed in most places by how clean it was, not only in the cities, but more generally speaking about everywhere.

At some point though, I was cycling along the coast of Mie then Wakayama prefectures, and although the scenery and roads were clean, I had a glance just behind the ramp walk, and realized that behind the trees, in the bush next to the road were hundreds of garbage bags, litter of all sort, really anything, just lying below. There was such a contrast from what my eyes were seeing until, I was shocked.

In another town several kilometres after (I forgot which place exactly, must have been while cycling up towards Wakayama city), I passed next to a big commercial area on my right. On my left there was a small patch of forest then the sea and again, that forest contained many many plastic bags, full but neatly tied up, every couple of meters or so, for several hundreds of meters.

I originally thought the first thrashes I saw along the road in the country side where "mistakes", like things flying off the window or pushed by the wind from another place (although there was a lot of garbage anyway). But when I saw these tied up plastic bags, they weren't there by chance, really people throw these bags away on the forest right here. That made me a bit sad, especially since it broke the original image I got.

(And I haven't spoke about the beaches and seafront all along that peninsula; I wouldn't walk bare foot there).

Then I came home in Switzerland, looked up the small water stream close to my place, and realized it wasn't as neat as one can see at first glance... So I should probably start with that before criticising other countries sigh

brookside• 7 years ago

Interested in the cycling part of this. Any routes you recommend?

I did the short Shimanami Kaido over the inland sea which was, of course, wonderful.

carty76ers2• 7 years ago

Follow-up question: did you camp along the route?

multani3• 7 years ago

This [1] is more of less what I did. There wasn't much of any dedicated cycling lanes (such as the Shimanami Kaido road) anywhere I went, so sometimes the traffic was not so cool. The parts in and out of the Alps, and in Mie prefecture (despite the off-road garbage ;) were the best to me: no so much traffic, few people, and the scenery was quite cool. My time was short and there were several places I wanted to connect, so YMMV.

[1] https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nuRT79jhVqLFPncCh9PnUhxK6K...

bonestamp23• 7 years ago

Because people clean it constantly. I still find it amazing how many people I see cleaning when I'm in Tokyo. I was in a store mid-morning and a man was vacuuming. I walked by again in the afternoon and I noticed he was vacuuming again. In the west, that happens once/day after the store closes. There it was continuous. But nothing blew my mind more than when I was on a dirt walking trail and there was a man sweeping twigs and leaves off the trail.

As much as that surprised me, it also kind of didn't because there are people working everywhere on everything all the time. The number of concrete mixers driving around was amazing. Infrastructure is never finished and always seems to be well funded. I feel kind of embarrassed when I see Japanese people visiting my city, like they've come to some kind of pioneer town with our litter everywhere, far too many cars for the available roads and with our laughably inadequate public transit infrastructure.

brunoqc• 7 years ago

You stop blowing your nose in public

Is it to stop germs from spraying in the air or is it more a polite thing? Or maybe to avoid having to carry the soiled tissue.

Do they hide in an alley to do it?

h1d3• 7 years ago

Japan is on declining population and when it chokes enough to bring people from all over the world, things might change.

jessriedel2• 7 years ago

These sort of articles about Japanese cleanliness and homelessness are intellectually dishonest if you don't mention massive factors like the fact that Japan eschewed the deinstitutionalization process that most wealthy countries went through toward the end of the 20th century

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

and as a result, they have four times the rate of involuntarily locking people up for mental illness as the average:

For the last 40 years mental health care has shifted from hospital-based settings to community-based ones in most countries. As a result the number of psychiatric care beds has fallen considerably internationally (Glasby & Tew, 2015:106). More and more people with mental disorders are living and being cared for in the community. In contrast, Japan still has a very high ratio of psychiatric care beds per capita among member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with 269 beds per 100,000 population compared to the average of 68 (OECD, 2014:11).

http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S...

ajhurliman• 7 years ago

This implies that the main cause of trash is homelessness. Although homelessness probably causes an increase of trash, I think it's clear that a culture of littering also causes trash, which is clearly not present in Japan.

Bringing in the subject of homelessness seems tangential to the topic at hand.

jessriedel2• 7 years ago

It certainly doesn't imply that this is the main cause, it suggests that it's an important cause (say, > 10%) that has to be acknowledged in a 10k word article. I also think dwelling on a "culture of littering" is much vaguer and less likely to make falsifiable predictions.

shahidkarimi• 7 years ago

That sort of cleanliness sucks. This is basically a step towards human extinction from the Earth.

vjba• 7 years ago

This is a similar situation in Austria too. Well... Vienna to be precise as it was the only place I visited there.

julienfr112• 7 years ago

Most first-time visitor to Paris are struck by how dirty the city is.

joezydeco• 7 years ago

This is a documented condition, especially among Japanese travellers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

chiefalchemist• 7 years ago

Further proof, the solution to every problem is not more taxes and more legislation.

nintendo1889• 7 years ago

You can thank the countries conservative men for that. Chaos v order.

hollsted-ifbit• 7 years ago

my first time in DF mexico visiting palacio de las bellas artes! There's a huge park next to it and I remember seeing nothing but trash all around it like a maze :(

tasty_freeze• 7 years ago

The thing that struck me when visiting there (Kyoto mainly) was not only the general cleanliness, but that there were semi-delicate public displays and works of art that were not defaced/demolished. Eg, some city street sculpture that if was in the US would probably not last a weekend before some kid or drunk thought it would be clever to knock it over.

flavmartins• 7 years ago

I've been to Japan two times in the last year and I was shocked at this too.

It's interesting that years back there was a man with mental health issues who carried out attacks by putting chemicals in garbage cans in public places. After this Japan got rid of garbage cans in public. Most of them, at least.

You walk downtown Tokyo and there are no garbage cans and no garbage anywhere. Every once in a while you come across a small convenience store with a very small can inside or every 10 or so vending machines will have a small bin for bottles or cans. But for the most part Japan is EXTREMELY clean. The city can be old, but it's all still clean.

Go to Shibuya, the famous crossing with thousands of people. Show up there in the morning before rush hour and you'll see very few people, and the streets are all clean. No garbage anywhere.

rootsudo• 7 years ago

Now that's a lie - go to shibuya around 5am right when the trains open, right at the crossing and look at Shibuya-Gai.

There's your trash.

dwd2• 7 years ago

The only time I ever really noticed litter in Japan was in Ueno Park during Sakura.

There's a good chance it was tourists as they had brought in skip bins that were all overflowing to the point where the skip was sitting in a mound of rubbish.

Seems not having bins in public places cuts down littering as there is no expectation that you can dump your rubbish and someone else will deal with it. A similar thing happened in Brisbane when they removed all the public bins for the G20. The few remaining bins were all overflowing with litter everywhere or people dumped rubbish where they used to be.

spinach• 7 years ago

I lived for a year and a half in Hyogo-ken, Japan during uni, mostly with a host family so I didn't criss-cross the country or anything but one of the grossest washrooms I have ever been in was in Kobe near the train station. It was like built into the wall and was just absolutely disgusting with no sink or anything. And I lived in China for a half a year and saw some pretty nasty toilets, but nothing as gross as that. Also, pretty much all combini washrooms are nasty too... But yeah, on the whole Japan appears cleaner - they learn to clean in school since they take turns being on duty for it and have to clean their own stuff, not just in high-school either. I joined the tea ceremony club at my uni which took place in this little traditional style house behind the school and once a week I was on duty in the morning to scrub the tatami. I think other countries should take that lesson and build in cleaning duties.

wst_5• 7 years ago

And it's not only kids. Grown-ups are supposed to do it at work, too. When casually I suggested in my office, London, that we should swipe our desks weekly people laughed at the idea, others were surprised and upset. It's not their job, isn't it?

the_resistence• 7 years ago

it's a beautiful country and people. Others have so much to learn from it about how to be civilized.

Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is

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