WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter/Translator/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03). Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends togethe
r with her own observations.
Time.com featured an interesting article today about how ANA is encouraging its customers to utilize restroom facilities before coming on board in an effort to reduce its carbon footprint. With lighter loads, planes would have reduced fuel consumption and therefore less impact on the environment. A great idea in theory, but as the article mentioned questionable as to how successful it will be in practice. Also, interestingly enough the pre-flight announcement with the request is only in Japanese, so those who do not speak the language might not know what is being asked.
Reading about this endeavor got me thinking about how my own attitude toward the environment and my habits subsequently changed as a result of my time living in Japan. I remember one of the first things that surprised me at my new workplace at Kumamoto City Hall was that no bit of paper went wasted. Seemingly unusable fragments were employed for note taking or other kinds of doodling, and paper where only had one side had been used was put in a special pile to be used for printing when you didn’t care if it was a clean sheet. This system worked surprisingly smoothly in an office where multiple people were sharing one printer and chances were high that your scrap paper would accidentally become the piece your co-worker’s letter to the mayor ended up being printed out on.
I actually had more issues when I tried to implement a similar system at the New York branch of the Japanese magazine I used to work for. We were an extremely small office of no more than four people, but somehow my colleagues were always upset that scrap paper ended up in the printer. I in turn felt frustrated when they were needlessly printing out tons of material such as emails or press releases on clean pieces of paper, when paper with one side that had been used would have done the job just fine.
Recycling is another area where Japan blew me away. Here in the States I was vaguely aware of the importance of recycling, having grown up with a big yellow recycling bin next to the normal garbage pails. However, the only qualification for putting trash in that bin was that it had a triangle (indicating “recyclable”) on the bottom, meaning no distinction was made between plastic and other kinds of materials. Recycling in Japan was a whole other ball game. I remember riding my bike every Saturday morning to tennis practice and on the way dropping off my trash in the designated spot, only to be greeted by a cranky obasan who took me to task for the poor sorting job I had done. Even though there were only two possible ways recyclables could be classified, she never seemed to be satisfied with my judgment. At least I didn’t have it as bad as my JET neighbors in Minamata, where waste is separated into 20 different categories due to the city having experienced one of the worst pollution disasters in Japanese history.
My ways of thinking also changed regarding disposable chopsticks (I now proudly carry “my hashi”), food portions (making sure to take only as much as I was sure I could eat at buffets; some places charge you if there is anything leftover) and napkins amounts (again instead of taking a huge stack, only the amount I thought was sufficient to keep clean during the meal). I think here in the States we have the tendency to think that bigger/more is always better, but Japanese seem to favor the idea that the appropriate amount is what is considered “enough”, and this is usually a conservative estimate. I remember talking with an Australian JET friend regarding two sizes of a certain drink in a vending machine that for some reason were the same price. I said that of course I would buy the larger one if it was the same exact price, whereas she said she would buy the size that she felt like she could drink at the time so as not to be wasteful, despite the fact that it would cost her no more to get the larger one. That struck me as a totally different way of thinking that provided a bit of insight into the Japanese psyche as well.
Speaking of the Japanese mindset, this week the Daily Sun newspaper featured an article about people’s satisfaction levels regarding where they lived. This was according to a recent Internet survey of 6000 participants carried out by Japan’s second largest advertising firm Hakuhodo. The results were that the top three places were Hokuriku (Toyama, Ishikawa, Fukui, etc.), Hokkaido Prefecture and Tohoku (Akita, Aomori, Iwate, etc.), and the least desirable were the Kinki and Kanto regions where Japan’s largest cities are located. I thought for sure Okinawa would top the list, but a key factor is that there were no questions regarding climate. Instead they measured the availability of nature, safety and cost of living. No wonder Tokyo found itself at the bottom of the list. I guess it’s all about what you’re looking for, but for me an area like Kumamoto with abundant onsens will always have my vote.
one comment so far...
You make it sound like the city hall and anywhere government run actually gives a damn about the environment, yet you fail to mention the fact that everyday there are 20 or so sheets of utterly USELESS printed notices placed on everyones desk. Sure, they take one step forward saving paper and then 50 steps back wasting it – good job japan.
As for recycling, England was about the same as here only you had to actually take it to the recycling center, at least they pick it up here – but what about government run paper recycling? Never seen any of that here. I imagine america would still be trashing everything though…