A Quick and Dirty Guide to Japan Garbage Sorting

I've now lived in Miyazaki for over a year. It's interesting. I'm starting to forget things that were once totally commonplace to my life.

What street did I used to live on?

What was the name of that bookshop I used to frequent?

What do tacos taste like again?

But I suppose that makes sense. A whole new set of Japan-related things have replaced those old, outdated memories with new ones in my brain. It's just like recycling.

Speaking of recycling, recycling is one of those Japan related things that I just figured out how to do. Just this month.

I know that might seem crazy considering I have lived in Miyazaki for over a year already. However, if you know anything about garbage sorting in Japan, you'll understand.

Here's how they sort trash here:

Group 1: Burnable garbage (Picked up on Mondays and Thursdays)
This includes normal garbage like fish skeletons, used paper towels and the love letters that I wrote to myself (you know, usual stuff), but also Styrofoam, clothing, and aluminum foil.

All things that are not what I would classify as burnable.

But as I am not the recycling advisor of Japan, I just have to let it go. しょうがない。

Group 2: Plastics (Picked up on Fridays)
Anything plastic except for plastic bottles. Why would that be, you ask?

Group 3: Plastic bottles (Picked up on the third Wednesday of every month)
This is where it starts to get tricky. God forbid you drink too many bottles of Coke Zero, because you'll have them piled up under your sink for a month. And don't forget to remove the caps and plastic label to be placed in plastics!

Group 4: Recycling (Picked up from a remote location on the second Wednesday of every month)
If you weren't intimidated before, now is a good time to feel intimidated. Not only does the recycling need to be brought to a certain specific location in your neighborhood (and every neighborhood is different), it needs to be separated into brown glass, green glass, clear glass, steel cans, aluminum cans and cardboard. The labels need to be removed. They need to be clean. The cardboard needs to be flattened and stacked in an orderly pile before tying it off with twine.

We're not done yet!

Group 5: Wild Card (Pick up unknown)
This is anything that doesn't belong in the other groups. Batteries, broken appliances, CDs, ghosts. To this day, I don't know where it's picked up. I just have a box of these things in my closet that I try to forget about. It causes me anxiety.

And after all that, it's important to note that if things are improperly sorted, or placed in a non-regulation garbage bag, you'll receive a little pink note that reads, "You are ignorant. Here is your trash, returned to you. Try again, fool."

I'd like to say I've never received this note. But alas, even my superior garbage offerings have gone unaccepted by the trash goddesses.

However, today I turned in my recycling with every bottle cleaned, every label removed, every cardboard perfectly folded and wrapped in a perfect Christmas bow. The tiny garbage grandma checking over my work gave me an A+ and I went off to work with a skip in my step.

So I guess I know about garbage now. But what I really want to know is if I will ever enjoy a taco again.

I will pray to the garbage goddesses for an answer.