People get so hung up on garbage, I don't get it. Keep a single plastic bag with you, put your trash in it. Take it back and throw it away at home or your hotel or wherever you're staying. Most train stations have plenty of garbage cans, and if you're traveling in Japan, you're probably taking a train.

The toilet paper sucks, sure, but that's just cheap single-ply for public use toilets. People can and do buy the good stuff for their homes. Hardly an issue to worry about.

Taking a plastic bag with you to lug around garbage is obviously inconvenient. They could just put up public garbage cans like most of the civilized world.

The hotels and public venues also had the cheap single-ply stuff.

I was not able to find any decent tissues in stores, so I doubt that people all buy the good stuff for their homes.

In cities, I agree that if you aren't used to it, it might be inconvenient.

However, 99% of hikers in Europe carry their own trash bags. It took off in the early 2000 and now it's almost a culture thing, especially amongst young hikers, and not having one is basically a social error (well, littering is, you can always ask people for an empty trash bag if you forgot yours). Honestly I can see why they choose that solution.

Hiking isn’t the same thing as walking around a town or city as a tourist.

I didn’t find the “carry your trash with you” to be too big of a hassle but what is truly barbaric is the social taboo on strolling through a park on a nice autumn day sipping your coffee!

Just since I’m posting here I did not experience what others have with the restrooms. The ones in the kobini were nasty and we often weren’t able to find public restrooms unless we happened to enter into a mall or somewhere like that where they seemed clean enough but not noteworthy. The Japanese excell in other areas of cleanliness though and you can be sure that many products will be aggressively double or triple-plastic wrapped.

> but what is truly barbaric is the social taboo on strolling through a park on a nice autumn day sipping your coffee!

Wait, what? Has anyone ever said anything to you when you strolled around a park drinking coffee? I've been in Japan over 10 years and do that all the time, no one has given a shit about it. The only time I ever hear about these "taboos" is when foreigners try to tell other foreigners how they should behave in Japan, like it has some mystique about it or something.

No but I definitely did not observe Japanese people doing it. Maybe something changed over the last couple of years but my understanding is that this is still considered a bit of bad form.

Now yea of course as an obvious foreigner nobody really cares because lol foreigner and even more so in super busy touristy areas but my understanding is it really isn’t done. Same with walking and eating.

Back when backpacker hostels used to be more social and people would talk in the common area, it wasn't unusual to hear a Japanese backpacker saying he was weirded out by the sight in that country of people eating or drinking while walking. Argentinians walking while sipping mate, for instance.

The people living here seem to survive just fine without these garbage cans, so I guess it's not really an "issue for them to worry about" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nice for them, but it's obviously inconvenient if you are not able to buy some food to consume in public and dispose of the garbage right there.

They could do better, and I see no need to pretend that everything over there was perfect as is.

I've been living in Japan for over 10 years. Everything is not perfect but the garbage cans are so far down the list that it doesn't even register for anyone who lives here.

I live in Japan. I usually have no trouble finding public restrooms or places to throw away trash. When necessary, I use the facilities at train stations.

I didn't thought that to be a very big issue when I went there. In fact if I could swap my middle European trash cans against Japanese style accessible and clean toilets I would do so without thinking about it for a second.