Recycling

This post is going to be shorter than my other blog posts, but I know that my mom (and maybe others of my readers) is extremely interested in the recycling process here, so enjoy this short post. Recycling in Japan is actually not as impressive as it seemed from the stories that I heard and the DVD that I watched from the JET Program. Really there are only 3 days that I take things out to the designated area near my house, and those are for: aluminum cans, plastic (PET) bottles, and burnables (trash). Each of these things needs its own special bag, though luckily not as expensive as Worcester trash bags. Anyway, they don't recycle paper or plastic bags in Odate which was very surprising because those are two big recyclable items in my house in Maryland. One would think that in a country where separating items is so important, paper and plastic bags, two very common items, would also be recycled. I really don't understand it. However there are strange things that we have to do (recycling wise), like cut apart milk cartons and take them to designated places supermarkets to recycle, and also wash bento trays (Styrofoam trays) and take them to their own place in the supermarkets. This is actually a huge pain in the butt and I currently have a lot of milk cartons and trays in my apartment because I would rather make huge trips than one small one every couple of days. One last thing: there are no trashcans ANYWHERE! Well, at least there are very few trashcans. This makes things very difficult when I ate a piece of gum and need to find a trashcan, or any other burnable product. Even because of this, Japan is extremely clean, but I bet it would be better if we actually had places to put our trash. The recycling process is very strange here, and maybe if I understood it better, this blog post would be better, but for now I'll just be a confused gaijin and pretend like I know what's going on.