Trash

One of the first thing I, and probably other foreigners arriving in Japan as well, found fascinating was how the separation and handling of trash here seems to be an entire science. Even if trash in Sweden (where I come from) is also in  large extent separated, it is not done with the same carefulness  as here.

The way trash is handled, the garbage trucks you see in the streets of the neighborhood almost every time you set foot outside the seminar house, and the fact that Japan, even with the lack of trash bins, seems to be extremely clean, gave me the notion that Japan is like that, clean and without littering. The strict regulations is also something that strikes me as different, during the orientation at Kansai Gaidai we were told that since the trash has to be packed in transparent bags, it will be noticed if the trash is not separated correctly, and if that is the case, the bag will not be picked up by the garbage trucks. We also learned that incorrect sorting of garbage is one of the main reasons for tension between neighbors in Japan.

The other day I took a long walk with my camera towards the small mountain range south of the University and I ended up walking along not too heavy trafficked road running along a small river. Along this road I found dumped trash in all forms and sizes.
I found bicycles, motorbikes, kitchen appliances, a creepy-looking heap of toys, and pretty much everything imaginable in the ditches and clusters of vegetation close to the road.

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Smashed TV.

The reason for at least many of this things being dumped like this is probably the Japanese recycling law, which means that consumers have to bring their used products to certain take-back sites and pay collection and recycling fees to the retailers who on their part has the responsibility to recycle these objects. Since there are fees for these services, some people might just find it a better idea to dump their garbage in a place they figure they will not be caught.

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One of several motorbikes I found on my walk.

When I did my research for this post, I came upon this article about a very creative way to make people think a second time before the throw their things out in the nature, an interesting idea but not a solution to the problem.

Leafs in Japan

After spending some time in Japan, I started to find is strange that imagery of suspicious looking leafs seemed to be found everywhere. I saw them In logotypes, as decoration in shopwindows and even in the prepackaged food at the local supermarket.

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The main reason I found this strange was because of the information about Japanese drug laws i got from Kansai Gaidai and the Japanese embassy in Sweden before i came here, which suggested that drugs are not looked light upon in Japan, arrests like this one also shows how serious drug use is looked upon here, if someone would even be arrested for such a small quantity in USA or Europe, it would most likely not lead to an article in the newspapers. 

The Cannabis leaf is, besides somewhat of an icon to stoners worldwide, also strongly connected to Reggae music, I think that for some people the leaf might even be more of a symbol for reggae than for drugs, even if there also is a strong connection between all three. I have seen several small stores here that among the souvenirs and knick-knacks they are selling have Reggae/Cannabis themed lighters, T-shirts and many other things. 

On one of my train rides from Hirakata to Osaka, I saw a very professional looking middle-aged woman, wearing a business dress and overall giving a very serious impression. I happened to notice that the wallpaper on her cellphone was a green, yellow and red colored flag with a big Cannabis leaf on it.

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Apartment building in Hirakata

It was not until I saw this sign that I realized that the leafs in some cases  might be much more innocent than the look. At first I just thought that there had been some kind of mistake, that the Cannabis leaf had been mistaken for a maple leaf.

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After some research, I found out that, in some cases the leaf is in fact that of the Japanese maple, which looks very different from the maple found in Europe. I have yet to see the actual tree and leafs in real life, but as you can see on the picture below, the different leafs are very similar, and In simplified images like the one above there might be no way to see what kind of leaf it is.

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Images originally found here and here

I think this is a good example of how things might not always be what they seem to be at a first glance, how things might be interpreted differently depending on who you are, where you are from and what you know. 

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I might be better of not using this coincase I bought in Miyajima once i get back home, as stated above, maple leafs look different where I come from and I am afraid that people might do the same assumptions I first did, which might make me look bad.