These are the instructions for taking out the rubbish:

And this is what I have to work with:

(plus a few miscellaneous carrier bags from shopping trips)

Tomoko-san! Help! Please explain how the rubbish thing works!

About rubbish… its quite complicated in japan. How every do you have to take them out by yourself? Usually a caretaker of flats will take them out from the collection place in your building to another place where rubbish
men collect. So you just have to take them out the place in your building.

But if not, please do it by yourself. Anyway, you have to divide into 4;
1. combustible such as paper;
2. incombustible such as plastic and hardware;
3. bottle, can, tin and canister but usually there is a can bank;
4. reccyclable such as newspaper and cloth. See the picture of how to do
with newspaper, just pile them and tie.
And battery should be separated from the others.
You can see other examples by pictures in the instruction.

Be careful, you have to clean bottle, can, tin and plastic before throwing away. If don’t, they wouldn’t be collected. Rubbish men (?) usually check if the separation is right or not and cleaned, so rubbish bag has to be clear and not black.

collection day (you may know but just in case);
1 & 2 →Tue, Thu, Sat
3 & 4 →Fri

I think thats it, I hope so. I really hate this in Japan. They are so strict. And sometimes if you don’t it properly, your caretaker or neighbor would put a paper on the bag and it says “Nikki san, please divide them properly.” So be careful.

If you need any help, just let me know.

Gambattene!

Tomoko