TRASH IS SO HARD

So here's a fun fact about Japan:

TRASH IS SO HARD TO THROW AWAY!

First of all, there's no trash anywhere along the streets or sidewalks or anything. Japan is SUPER clean. Which is awesome.

But what I don't get is where all the trash goes, because when you're walking around there are also hardly ever any public trash cans anywhere. Except outside convenience stores, usually, but when you're downtown that can be hard to find.

Most importantly, though, trash is super hard to throw away because it gets sorted into at least six different categories. Including your own trash at home. We have a chart to help us figure it out, which looks like this:

Of course, this helpful chart is in Japanese. But the main point of it is that everything gets sorted into a color, and that color trash gets put out and collected on a specific day of the week, or every other week, or once a month. Depending on the category.

Tyler hadn't tried taking out the trash at all before I got here. Apparently if you put out the wrong trash on the wrong day, or if your trash is incorrectly sorted, the garbagemen will bring your trash back to you and fine you. This morning we tried putting trash out for the first time. It was pink day. It's 2pm and I have yet to have anyone knock on my door bringing me garbage, so I think that means we're good! Fingers crossed.