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

#111

Post by james_s_tayler » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #93

munmaek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

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.

The idea is they got freaked out after the 1995 sarin gas attack and in a knee-jerk reaction took away all the rubbish bins.

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

#112

Post by daddylonglegs » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:31 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…

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.

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

#113

Post by CapricornNoble » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

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.

Huh, my pachinko encounter was the complete opposite. My friend wanted to go to one while we were walking around once. As soon as the doors opened I was accosted by DEAFENING noise and the oppressive smell of cigarette smoke (as if chain-smokers were hot-boxing the place). I told him nope. This is one experience you'll have to try without me.

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

#114

Post by Mathnerd314 » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

dilap wrote: post #66

dmoy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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,…

Article on the London experiment: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/16/the-tube-at-...

It's a long escalator, so few people walk (40% according to the Guardian article). And then during rush hour there's a crowd in front of the escalator.

This blog post estimates walking is 26 seconds and standing is 40 seconds: https://www.capgemini.com/gb-en/2016/04/would-standing-on-th...

The optimal policy is to have everyone walk 2 abreast as densely as possible, so this about debating two suboptimal policies. Presumably if it was actually a problem they would just build another escalator.

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

#115

Post by jessriedel » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

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...

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

#116

Post by bboreham » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

jdkram wrote: post #85

dilap wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Transport for London experimented with this, and found higher overall throughput during rush hour with two standing lanes: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/it-is-faster-to-s... > Standing-only escalators had a "throughput" of up to 151 passengers per minute, while an escalator where commuters were still allowed to walk saw around 115. Your thought experiment's completely right, but in real world circumstanc…

That’s in one place, which is a particular bottleneck. The general rule is that two lanes are better.

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

#117

Post by shahidkarimi » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

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

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

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Post by CapricornNoble » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #75

kimjongtrill wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i see every country has its own florida

Osaka holds a strange place in Japanese culture. It is considered distinctly “un-Japanese,” but still at the same time is famous for producing all kinds of creative types (comedians, musicians, artists). And its accent is generally considered charming, if “inappropriate” for formal discourse. As an American, I’ve always felt more comfortable there because it’s way less uptight and rule-bound than other parts of Japan…

Almost every time I've been approached by a friendly, curious, Japanese person, they've been from Osaka. Regardless of age or gender, they are definitely the most outgoing and gaijin-friendly people in Japan.

While we're on the subject of Osaka stories, about 5 years ago in February I was walking with friends near the "Running Man" bridge in Shinsaibashi. Probably around 1am, and cold. A taxi pulls up close to the bridge....the driver pops the trunk, a passenger joins him at the rear of the vehicle....and they took a PASSED OUT Japanese dude outta the taxi's trunk and just laid him on the concrete. He didn't even have a shirt on. They reached in the trunk and threw a shoe at him. Then the taxi left. We're just standing there in awe thinking "No shirt, shoes off, probably drunk and lying on cold concrete in February? That dude is gonna die of hypothermia and whoever dropped him off doesn't seem to give 2 shits....man Osaka is wild."

Not surprising as this is about 2 blocks from the parking lot where all the yakuza park their exotics[1]. Look at that building in Street View and even in daytime there's a yellow exotic parked there.

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/dyPU7rzM5QbkLtTEA

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

#119

Post by piracyde25 » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

goranmoomin wrote: post #60

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 generall…

>They consider the consequences of every action carefully.

I believe that is what Shintoism teaches.

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

#120

Post by CapricornNoble » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:58 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…

>>>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.