Rubbish Rules

Possibly the most complicated thing about living in Japan is the bureaucracy surrounding rubbish. In fact, it's so complicated that our

supervisor, Tsucky, sat down with us one

morning at the BOE and explained the

different options. There are 6 types of rubbish. Burnable (plastic bag with blue writing), general plastic (bag with black writing on it), PET recycling, can recycling, glass recycling (glass has to be separated as to colour) - these 3 have to be taken and sorted into different boxes at the rubbish station, and finally the 'general' bag (bag with orange writing on it), which basically has anything else - the examples on the poster is a pair of shoes!

Once the rubbish is sorted it has to be put in the right place on the right day. Luckily my rubbish days are all Tuesdays, so I just need to remember which Tuesday we are on. The burnable bag goes at the end of my driveway, but all the other rubbish has to be taken to the community centre called 'Sun Life'.

Confused? Try living and figuring out where to put the rubbish once you've finished cooking or something. I'm still not sure which bin the aluminium foil goes in. So my solution to that is to wash the one piece I have used and re-use it until it disintegrates, then I don't need to find the right bin to put it in.

In some places in Yamaguchi you're supposed to write your name on the bag before you leave it, but I am terrified that will mean the bag gets returned because I've done something wrong, so I leave mine unlabelled. It seems that no one labels their bags as I'm yet to see a name on a bag anywhere!