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

bbc.com

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

#51

Post by journalctl »

sunstone wrote: post #47
tasogare wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The pachinko parlors are particularly quiet and serene.

Just don’t bother any men in the back in flashy suits and you just might get to keep your pinky fingers.

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

#52

Post by chvid »

LIV2 wrote: post #24
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

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.

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

#53

Post by Symbiote »

jaynetics wrote: post #26

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…

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.

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

#54

Post by Rapzid »

kgwgk wrote: post #43
kylorhall wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> There's no bins on the street because Many were removed as a security measure after the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.

I was about to say "Well if you enter the subway system with trash you could be with it a while". Perhaps this explains that.

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

#55

Post by dmoy »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #49

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 thousand…

> 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.

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

#56

Post by rjf72 »

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…

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.

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

#57

Post by 88840-8855 »

netsharc wrote: post #20
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…

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 of…

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!

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

#58

Post by electriclove »

dmoy wrote: post #55
davidmurdoch wrote: post #49

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 thousand…

> 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.

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

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

#59

Post by electriclove »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #49

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 thousand…

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

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

#60

Post by goranmoomin »

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.

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