Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by Frost1x » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

cumwolf wrote: post #11

fiblye wrote: post #5

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 bag…

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.

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.

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

#22

Post by hanoz » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #4

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…

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.

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

#23

Post by williamdclt » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #13

Reason077 wrote: post #4

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…

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.

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

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

#24

Post by LIV2 » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

chvid wrote: post #6

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.

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

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

#25

Post by tw1010 » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

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?

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

#26

Post by jaynetics » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

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.

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

#27

Post by ekianjo » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #5

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 bag…

> 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.

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

#28

Post by kylorhall » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

pjdemers wrote: post #15

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.

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).

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

#29

Post by tom_ » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

lol768 wrote: post #18

Aperocky wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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'…

I tidy up or not based on whether there's table service. No table service = I do it myself, table service = it's somebody else's problem. I don't think anybody ever taught me this explicitly - it's just something I must have picked up, I suppose?

I don't think it's really all that outrageous to just leave the detritus on the table in either case. But when there's no table service, the tables won't be getting cleared so regularly, so it can make things inconvenient for the other patrons.

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

#30

Post by mnky9800n » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #19

fiblye wrote: post #5

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 bag…

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…

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