Japan, man.

For the (almost) two years I've lived out in town I have had zero problems sorting my trash. For those that don't know, trash in Japan (if you live in town) is sorted into various piles. The piles are then given different days of the week for pickup. For example, Monday is burnables; Tuesday is plastics; Wednesday is non-burnables....and so on and so forth.

Trash collection times and types varies from area to area. When you move into your off base house, you are given an instruction manual about sorting trash. It SEEMS intimidating, but it was very easy for me to get used to sorting my trash and from the beginning I was a champ at the whole deal. If there was a trophy for proper trash sorting, I would probably win it.....just saying.

Prior to a few weeks ago, I had a ZERO rejection rate. Oh yeah, that's right, if you don't sort your trash correctly, it isn't picked up, but instead left in the bin with a note attached. It's your responsibility to retrieve it from the bin and fix the issue, but it can mean holding onto your trash for an extra week.

A few weeks ago, the trash collectors started refusing my plastic trash. Plastic trash is only picked up once a week, which means I had to store old trash. Ick. I tried sorting and resorting and still no pickup. I stored the trash in my carport until I could figure out what to do, but one morning, the crows got hold of the bags, ripped them open and spread the trash across my driveway and into my neighbors yard. Talk about embarrassing, walking around claiming used sandwich wrappers, empty Funyun packages, empty Doritos packages, and empty cookie wrappers. Don't judge me!! I'm a fat kid at heart who loves to snack a little too much, okay?!

Ahem. Moving on....

The crows pulling my trash out for everyone to see was the last straw. I took a picture of the note attached to the garbage bags and asked someone to translate it for me. It said my plastic containers were dirty. Of course they were.

So, I had to go back through several weeks of old plastic trash and wash each item. Yup. I am washing my trash....only in Japan can your trash be too dirty.

Now, some people might have given up and just taken their trash to base and dumped it in any random dumpster. On base, you don't have to sort the trash, contractors do that and then send it to Japanese landfills. Let me remind you that if an offbase resident is caught dumping household trash on base, there are penalties (I don't know what and I don't want to find out).  There is one bin on base where offbase residents can dump appliances and large furniture, but that is it. It's not that the police monitor the dumpsters (they don't), but there's plenty of people on base eager to jot down your license plate number and report you to the authorities. Why? Because when you dump trash on base it leaves less room in the dumpster for onbase residents to dispose of their trash. They don't like to be confronted with overflowing dumpsters. I get their point, it's not pleasent.

Anyway, so now I sit here taking a break from washing my trash. Let's cross our fingers that pick up happens for me on Tuesday.