Remember how I was stressing about not putting out the five different arcane types of garbage correctly? Well, this is what happens if you screw up! Your trash is shamefully left behind with big colorful notes on it to tell you what you did wrong!
The yellow note says that the kind of trash in the white bag isn’t allowed to be thrown away in the recycling pick-up and must be put out on non-burnable trash day. The purple note admonishes the scofflaw to sort his/her garbage before putting it out for collection. See that orange oil bottle through the plastic? It’s made of recyclable plastic, but the garbage owner just tossed it willy-nilly into the recyclables bag without washing it first. Big no-no. If you’re going to be lazy, that sort of thing has to be concealed in the burnable trash, under the umbrella of “plastic with unremovable food stains.”
Naturally, when I spotted these left behind in front of my building, I scurried over to examine the bags to make sure it wasn’t MY garbage that had been rejected. Whew, it wasn’t. I do live with the fear that everybody THINKS it was mine, though, since I’m one of the few foreigners in the neighborhood.
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The Last Tea Bowl Thief was chosen as an Editor’s Pick for
Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense on Amazon
“A fascinating mix of history and mystery.” —Booklist
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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly e-magazine Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had
Only In Japan 
Well recycling is getting very serious here in the States too, mainly with the cardboards, they wont take them is you put them in the regular garbage. also if the kind of plastics are wrong the recycle people leave them behind, also if you plastic bottles are not clean, ( grease or paint etc) athe also leave them behind. They don’t put signs yet, but please don’t let them know because they may adopt this idea. Also is the plastic containers have foor or scraps they won’t take them in my area, so the Japanese are ahead of our recycling system, but we are geeting there. believe me we are getting in ther.