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At the end of the jam-packed journey from Tokyo to the coast, the thing stands out like a sore thumb. Squatting on the narrow window frame is a near-empty can of lukewarm coffee that a negligent commuter had failed to plonk in the nearest bin. Shame on him for leaving JR to clear away a momentary eyesore.
In New York or Paris, the fact that the entire train contained merely a single item of rubbish would be a cause for major celebration. And it's far, far worse in London where you must expect to wade knee-deep through discarded free newspapers and sandwich wrappers each and every morning when traveling on the underground and buses. Not so, of course, in Japan as pristine conditions are assumed to apply however crowded the train or late the hour.
Cleanliness was the rule too along the beach last Sunday for the annual spring clean-up day. Volunteers assigned glass fragments, bits of oily debris, old shampoo containers and the discarded flotsam of trawlers into sacks for their final, decent burial. One neighbor equipped with white gloves and a long set of tweezers gathered up each and every cigarette butt from the apartment surrounds, while others rode off on bicycles with the rubbish they had diligently collected in their front paniers.
So much for the good news. The image, though, that first-time visitors have of Japan as a spotless nation where litter remains an unknown problem is far from the whole story. Take Japan's central icon for starters. The fact that climbers on Mount Fuji have earned a nasty reputation for letting the home side down by discarding their lunch boxes and water bottles hardly fits in with the received wisdom that each and every Japanese citizen takes litter home.
Fortunately, though, favored suburban and rural areas have a community spirit that engages in constant hand-to-hand anti-litter warfare. Rubbish goes out on the correct days and if you live down in Kanagawa, you split it up religiously into specific weekly categories for plastics, cans, bottles, burnable and non-burnable items -- to say nothing of bundling up newspapers and magazines into separate piles for special collections with the reward of a couple of rolls of toilet paper for your pains.
Expats, too, quickly follow suit. The Indian author Pico Iyer reports from Nara in "The Global Soul" that "I find myself picking up stray pieces of trash as I walk down the street" and that when "getting up from my seat in the bank, I stop to brush it clean as I would never do 'at home.'"
Unfortunately, it's going to take far greater civic consciousness to tackle the litter problems associated with cigarettes and cycles. Officialdom has been trying for ages to get results from smokers and bikers with only qualified success.
With cigarettes, there has been something of a “revolution” in recent years. Japan is no longer a smokers’ paradise. The rights of commuters on express trains and station platforms to foul the air and litter the floor are being steadily curtailed. Some coffee shops have installed cast-iron smoking boxes that really do act to keep the stench away from the rest of their customers and smoking in public places is being reduced.
Yet reviewers in Metropolis magazine are obliged to add that “nonsmoking seats not available” when they review restaurants and only last night my spaghetti in a decent trattoria in Takadanababa came sprinkled with the stench from a neighboring table of nicotine addicts. The supposed apartheid-like division between smoking and non-smoking sections in Japanese establishments can be flimsy indeed.
While there is some progress on the smoking front, things are in reverse when it comes to bicycles. Bikes are now stolen and abandoned at will throughout city centers, despite gentle warning notices from ward offices and universities. These amount to no more than slaps on the wrist that most folk ignore with the result that dozens and dozens of unclaimed cycles clog up narrow urban streets. Fines for illegally parked bikes may have to be substantially hiked to deter cyclists and force them to use the public parking pools.
Japan needs to get more serious over smoking in public and needs to stamp down on the casual dumping of bikes. Politicians and bureaucrats doubtless fear a backlash that will hurt tax revenues, lose them votes and lead to shouts of human rights violations but smokers and cyclists need to be restrained.
© Japan Today
17 Comments
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Pukey2
The only coffee shops I've seen which do this are Starbucks (smoking outside) and Tully's, and these two are......wait for it....non-Japanese companies. Even these two have had to make comprises to satisfy the Japanese lung cancer lovers.
hokkaidoguy
"Politicians and bureaucrats doubtless fear a backlash that will hurt tax revenues, lose them votes and lead to shouts of human rights violations but smokers and cyclists need to be restrained. "
I got a laugh out of that. Three cheers for Fascism!
The police here go far above any other nation I've been to with regard to stolen bikes - they routinely set up random bike checks and ask people for their ID and so on. That's treated as perfectly normal behavior by the Japanese, but as a human rights violation on the order of a cross-burning by the expat press.
You think that smokers and cyclists need to be restrained. I think you need to wake up to the fact that your perceived rights in this country do not transcend the rights of others. Your "right" to not be offended by the sight of ditched stolen bikes does not trump my "right" to be able to ride home unmolested by the cops, or my "right" to buy a bike without paying for a mandatory tracking chip, or my "right" to not be subjected to a multi-million dollar anti-bike dumping media campaign. Get it?
What do you propose? Oh, right. NOTHING.
Next time, go to a non-smoking restaurant. And remember to be nice to the cop when he stops you on the way home from the station. "Yes sir" and so forth. Mind your manners. He's protecting you from the blight of abandoned bikes.
cleo
'Offended by the sight of ditched stolen bikes'? How about 'offended by the sight of an empty space in the bike park where my bike is supposed to be, meaning my 'right' to ride home unmolested has turned into the need to walk home'?
I've had enough bikes stolen (and a couple actually returned by the police) to welcome their violation of your 'rights'.
It seems like you get it, but you don't get it... Neither your perceived 'right' to be able to ride home unmolested by the cops, nor your "right" to buy a bike without paying for a mandatory tracking chip, nor your "right" to not be subjected to a multi-million dollar anti-bike dumping media campaign, transcends my right to have the cops doing whatever is necessary to get me my bike back, or better still stop it getting nicked in the first place.
hokkaidoguy
Cleo -
Instead of waiting for the cops to sort everything else, perhaps you could go out and buy a lock. A good one, that can't be compromised by a pair of tin snips and a screwdriver. If you've had several bikes stolen, I think this might be something to consider.
How about taking a bit of responsibility for your own actions?
cleo
lol
Like I didn't invest in good strong locks. (The difference between a 'mandatory' lock for the bike and a 'mandatory' tracking chip being...?)
Our local bike park was infested with bike thieves - if they couldn't break your lock, they would let your tyres down out of spite. Still means a walk home from the station. Anything that sticks it to the bike thieves/sabotagers is fine by me, even if it means your 'right to ride home unmolested' is marginally compromised. Be happy you've got a whole bike to ride.
And remember to be nice to the cop when he stops you on the way home from the station. He has enough jerks to deal with in the course of a day.
fds
the problem with bike parks is that they are out of plain sight so its easy to do what you want without being seen. may be they should install cameras?
that being said this article is rubbish. all it does is condesendingly condem bike theives and smokers.
USNinJapan2
I can deal with smokers in public settings within reason, but what really gets my goat is when I see someone in a car smoke then throw their cigarette butt out of the window on to the street. I have no problem with smokers polluting themselves and the insides of their cars (I do have a problem if I see their kids inside with them) and I can even handle watching them tap the ash off their cigarettes out of their windows, but when they blatantly litter like that it really makes me want to hurt them. I swear one of these days I'm going to get out of my car, pick up the butt and chuck it back in the litterbug's window. Smokers like this are fine with the cigarettes when they're smoking them but the butts when done are too dirty to discard in the ashtray in their car? Is it just plan laziness? Stupidity? I just can't comprehend the complete lack of concern a smoker shows when he/she flicks an unsightly piece of biodegradable-resistant trash that'll adorn the street, train track, tee box, etc. for the next 15 years unless someone else cleans it up. If you're one of these people shame on you!!!
Curmudgeon
The articles missed out the most irritating form of pollution on the Tokyo streets -- dog dirt. It is true that during daylight hours Japanese dog owners, or perhaps I should say surrogate parents, dutifully clean up after their canine offspring, but at night, when nobody can see them, and shame at fouling the streets is not a factor, they let their curs deposit their stools anywhere and don't bother to clean up. A walk around my neighbourhood in the early morning proves this. Come on J-doglovers, clean up after your substitute kids!
nath
Lots of anger here. I have had over ten bikes stolen. One was bran new. Never road it. And it had two locks. I hate it when the cops call me up after I have already bought a new bike and ask me to come down and get the old one. If you do not take the old one, they charge you for the bike to stay there. Get a clue! It is stolen from me and I have to pay? No way. I ride it a block away, scrape off the insurance number, and leave it there. Problem solved.
cleo
What problem? Why not take it home and have a spare the next time the bike thieves strike?
ThonTaddeo
There's a big difference between a bike parked near the station because the rider is using a shop nearby, and a bike that's been abandoned there for months. This is why I like the "warning tag" system that many municipalities use, where they tie such a tag to bikes parted in these spots, and then only take away the tagged bikes when they come back days or weeks later.
And I agree 1000% on the cops and their egregious street stoppage campaigns. Finding stolen bikes is only the "tatemae" part of what they're doing -- they're also using it as an excuse to question foreigners, young freeter types, and anyone else they might consider undesirable. If they were really concerned about bicycle theft, you'd see 60-year-old Japanese women stopped just as often as, say, 25-year-old Middle Eastern men. But of course you don't.
Pukey2
Yelnats:
That was a pun, right?
memyselfI
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Apsara
The word "tweasers" in the article should be spelled "tweezers". Actually I disagree with the use of "tweezers" in any case- tweezers are small. Tongs is the appropriate word here. Armchair proofreader out.
Moderator: Thank you for the correction.
ultradodgy
Are people here seriously suggesting that you can't buy a thief-proof bike lock?
Really? Where do you shop? The Jingu flea market?
knowitall
So is writing comments in all double-byte characters just so you stand out in the crowd. And hard to read to boot.