However, in America, there are some cultural benchmarks that are rarely achieved. Case in point: litter. On Monday morning, I spotted a used black plastic garbage bag and a handful of birdcage linings (fka Portland Tribune pages) on a relatively heavily-trafficked street in Northwest Portland.
This scene would be outrageous in Japan. My guess is that it would bring shame upon the litterer and, matter of fact, a fellow like me who took the picture and did nothing about it except complain and criticize like I do as I write this.
Pardon me a digression: we do not do enough shaming in this culture we claim as American. We have too many "sensitive" people who cannot handle how bad they do things. It lowers the bar of achievement when we let slide what should be accomplished...like putting things in your own garbage, not the public right-of-way. "It's okay, honey, just throw that on the street, we haven't seen a garbage can in nearly three blocks," says enabler Mommy or Daddy. Well, as for my recent trip to Tokyo, I had some refuse from a snack and tried to find a garbage can to throw it away in...yet it took a matter of some 4-plus miles of walking through the dense urban jungle that is FKA Edo to find a simple garbage can to throw away a plastic box that once contained food. Yet, I packed it away like a woodsman, in my pack and then placed it in a trash bin like a semi-humanoid, somewhat responsible American. I was concerned about the shame it would bring me in Honshu, more than I appreciated the notion of defiling a former enemy country's streets with refuse.
Let me continue...
Another thing you will notice in this photograph is the humus layer on the street also known as a bed of fallen leaves. This is despicable as it relates to the Japanese...and on many levels as I see it.
First, the fact that leaves are on the ground and not tended to in any way is problematic. It is an eyesore. Second, the biomass turns disgusting rather quickly. Not okay either.
Next, we get to the problematic stage of cleaning this up (if it is ever done). In American cities, there are typically two ways to rid the streets of leaves, both appalling in my book and something one would probably never see in Japan. The first way is to have one or two sunglasses- and sound-proof earmuff-wearing husky fellows amble down the street with gas-powered backpack blowers and indiscriminately blow leaves from one area into another area and form a vague semblance of a pile that some other husky lad will come up and shovel or otherwise get into a bed of a pickup truck or utility trailer (though sometimes the blowing of leaves into simply less-offensive places sans-pickup occurs...the easiest and least-time consuming).
If one asks: what do you have against husky post-adolescent men or pickup trucks or the piling up of leaves? You would be missing the point. The major point here is the noise. The blowers are unnecessarily loud, and by a great measure of extra decibels. The other minor point is that this is a one-man job. In Japan, you see a solitary male, usually with a reflective safety vest and a standard garden (or leaf) rake softly —and may I repeat, softly, without the excessive screech and scrape of metal on asphalt, softly—raking the fallen leaves into a pile and disposing of them quietly into a bag.
The other method seen of late in the City of Roses is to have a tractor with some sort of leaf-gathering and street-scraping mechanism on its grill pile up the humus as best he can into a pile and use this device to help the pickup crew load leaves into the trucks. Again...efficient, yet noisy. Diesel-powered tractors with steel scrapers and reverse-beeps (!)—safe, yet sonically horrific, especially as it applies to a weekend morning over a cup of coffee and trying to settle in to the football-watching.
So, the moral of the story is to throw garbage into a garbage can and to do your best to rake softly (but carry a big stick) and avoid the needless noise.
Not in Japan.
