Day 19 saturday 28th August 2010
Not sure what to do next, we go the local convenience store to get some rubbish bags.
At about 65 cents each they are a good deal but there’s a catch.
In Japan you have to sort your rubbish, you can’t just toss it all in the one bag like I do at home.
Rubbish is called “Gomi” here and it’s a big deal.
Green bags are for burnable stuff. Yellow bags non burnable. Plastic bottles go in one box. Cans in another. Glass must be separated by colour. Cardboard is another……
Old bastards with lots of time on their hands take it upon themselves to become Gomi police. The bags are see through and they will check that you haven’t put the cans in with the food waste. If they can trace where it came from, they will return it to you and bleat about being responsible and doing your duty etc… what a fucking nightmare!
So, after sorting everything out and then bagging it, you then have to take it to the local gomi station.
You can see these on the side of the road every few hundred metres or so.
They consist of a metal cage where you deposit your gomi bags.
Theres a timetable on the side which tells you which days are for which type of Gomi.
Tue and Thurs PM for green bags, Wed AM for yellow bags. 2nd Monday of the month for cardboard……Who the hell has time for this?
 |
| Gomi rules |
So cunning plan D was hatched. Distribute at random throughout the community!
If we load up the truck and drive around town at night depositing 3 or 4 bags in every cage we think it should take us 3 days to off load all this crap.
So that was how we got rid of the clothes, shoes, toys, plates, cups and honeymoon photos. The Salvation Army would have cried if they had seen it. What a waste.
By now I’m wondering if its possible to rip the sofa apart and fit it in a load of yellow bags. Same for the double mattress. How would the locals react to a Dunedin Style couch burning?
 |
| Another roll of gomi bags |
Then the solution appears out of nowhere.
A small old Kei truck appears on our street with loud speaker blaring some gibberish.
I ask Shizuka “What the hell is that noise”
I find out that these guys drive around and will take any rubbish they think is valuable for recycling like aluminium or TVs, washing machines etc.
So she stops the guy and asks him to come have a look and take what he wants.
This leads to one of the comic highlights of the trip.
This scruffy guy gets out of his scruffy truck, comes into the house and almost has a heart attack when he see’s me. AHH a foreigner!!!
After he calms down we tell him we want to get rid of all this stuff so the house is totally empty. He turns out to be a wealth of information. If you are talking Rubbish….he’s the man.
While he’s looking for treasure, the rubbish removal company guy drives up in a new Nissan skyline. With his sharp uniform, he the opposite of the recycling man.
Out comes his clipboard and soon we have a quote…..120,000 yen. About NZ$2000. Not including the fridge which needs another company and will cost about $400 to dump.
Yeah……we’ll think about that one.
Off he goes.
Now the recycling man has been poking around and listening to the proceedings.
He tells us that Kyoto prefecture is the hardest most expensive place to get rid of rubbish in . Osaka, on the other hand is completely opposite.
Now the border is about a 1 minute drive from here but it might as well be on the moon because you have to show proof of residence to use the Osaka dump.
Luckily our new friend is a native of the big O and like most Osakan’s is always on the lookout for an opportunity to make a quick buck.
He says he’ll take all the stuff away for 100,000.
Shizuka says “How about 80,000”
He says he’ll never get to own a Skyline with that sort of price.
I tell him that Skylines are crap and not that expensive anyway.
He makes a call to his friend and we have a deal.
He'll be by on Tuesday at 10AM.
No comments:
Post a Comment