Trash blows

Hey all,

In case you hadn't noticed by the posting time, my schedule is right back to it's pre-Japan levels now that I live 5 mins. from work and don't really have to show til like 10 or so... loving this place!

So just got paid for the first time in what feels like a good long while... after the move and splurging on a trip to Vietnam coupled with a month off work my savings were definitely hurting, but now things look to be back on track.

Now here it is 1:30am and I'm stuffing trash into these little yellow bags to stuff on the curb... stupid. I thought I'd mentioned trash in this country before, but it's totally frickin ridiculous. When you move into a new place, they give you a trash schedule, and you'd have to see this thing to believe it. Take this place for example: Mondays and Thursdays are your standard combustable garbage.

Which day is recyclables you ask? Well that would depend... if you mean newspapers and magazines then that's on Wednesdays, but then of course glass bottles are on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of the month, alternating with cans which are on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday. Oh and don't throw your plastic bottles out with the glass ones - those get tossed with metals on the 1st and 3rd Fridays. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I'm actually sorta pissed right now though, because last time I was all happy to put stuff out after checking the schedule to make sure I was getting the right day and all. Then after work I come home and find the trash still right where I left it with a big gash through the side of it! I do what any man would do when something is broken - read the manual for the first time ever - and find that oooh, you have to throw your trash out in their special frickin yellow and pink bags or else "they don't know what to do with it." What the hell is that? I mean it's not rocket science here, you take a bag and throw it in a truck, easy-peasy Japanesey (and I can say that). I refuse to believe that they are that moronic that they can't figure out what to do with a bag because of it's (lack of) color - just look at the stupidly complicated schedule that you guys came up with, and if it's bottle day *and you have bottles*, regardless of what bag they're in you throw them in with the other bottles. Same with trash. Simple.

You know I love this place, but sometimes it can be frustrating dealing with people that follow the rules to the letter without giving a second thought to what the rules actually mean and why they might have been put in place... and sometimes more importantly, when you can bend the rules and still get the same damn results.

I also remember the subject of trash separation coming up with a Japanese friend - he was shocked when he visited the states and found that we only separate into trash and "recylables", and concluded that Americans were not capable of dealing with the Japanese system if it were proposed in the US. I agreed that it would never work, but of course told him that it's not that we're not capable, it's just that separating to that extent is far too annoying and ridiculous for any sane person to agree it's worth while. That's what we hire trash guys for, right? Why don't they just do their frickin jobs? Sheesh.