02 December 2007
Imperial Palace gardens visit
2007 Dec 08 Filed in: parks
Right in the centre of Tokyo in the Chiyoda district, opposite Tokyo station lies the imperial palace (wp). It is the private residence of emperor Akihito (wp) and the imperial family. Only on rare occasions, such as the emperor’s birthday on December 23., the palace opens its doors to the public. I shall return here for this event, but in the meantime I came to visit the imperial palace gardens, which are open to the public most of the time.
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Dealing with rubbish
2007 Dec 03 Filed in: general
| housekeeping
In Japan, dealing with rubbish is a topic for itself
so I though I’d mention it. The Japanese are very
tidy and clean people and on top of that, the sense
of environmental consciousness is very strong in the
general population here. Recycling is very advanced
with many more materials being re-used here than in
most places around the world.
However, when you dig a little deeper it turns out that this is not all down to virtue. The recycling frenzy that is going on here is not so much about being good to the environment, that is merely a welcome side-effect, but it has much more about practicality. Although Japan is very large, the habitable areas are small due to the mountainous terrains. Hence there is also little space to store rubbish in landfills. As the country foresaw that landfills would quickly dominate the habitable areas, they started their advanced recycling programmes.
Since not all waste can be recycled, a portion of it is also burned. As a tourist, you may find the different bins for plastics, metals etc, but generally you are shielded from the burnable/unburnable conundrum. As a resident on the other hand, you have to learn quickly what does and doesn’t burn. And it’s not as straight forward as you might think. It depends less on material properties and more on local policy. So it is common that in one place chopsticks are burnable (as they are made of wood) but a different place just 100m away managed by a different company, they are unburnable and should be disposed along with newspapers.
On a more humorous note, I found these instructions on how to dispose of a tetrapack container. So you are meant to: rinse it out, cut it open, dry it (along with your socks and pants maybe) and then put in the bin. It feels like there is still room for improvement in terms of ergonomics.
However, when you dig a little deeper it turns out that this is not all down to virtue. The recycling frenzy that is going on here is not so much about being good to the environment, that is merely a welcome side-effect, but it has much more about practicality. Although Japan is very large, the habitable areas are small due to the mountainous terrains. Hence there is also little space to store rubbish in landfills. As the country foresaw that landfills would quickly dominate the habitable areas, they started their advanced recycling programmes.
Since not all waste can be recycled, a portion of it is also burned. As a tourist, you may find the different bins for plastics, metals etc, but generally you are shielded from the burnable/unburnable conundrum. As a resident on the other hand, you have to learn quickly what does and doesn’t burn. And it’s not as straight forward as you might think. It depends less on material properties and more on local policy. So it is common that in one place chopsticks are burnable (as they are made of wood) but a different place just 100m away managed by a different company, they are unburnable and should be disposed along with newspapers.
On a more humorous note, I found these instructions on how to dispose of a tetrapack container. So you are meant to: rinse it out, cut it open, dry it (along with your socks and pants maybe) and then put in the bin. It feels like there is still room for improvement in terms of ergonomics.