Aspects of Japanese culture that make maintaining cleanliness in public second nature
Lots of people observe when they come to Japan that public areas are very clean! And yes, Japan is one of the cleanest countries in the world! But how do we do it? There are two things that make it possible for Japan to maintain this level of cleanliness. First, compulsory education taught us how to keep clean. Second, the lack of trash cans which encourages personal responsibility for disposing of waste.
Compulsory education
According to the research, 58.1% of schools all over the world have janitors to clean up the schools and 34.3% of schools don’t have janitors. In the US especially, it’s unheard of for students to clean. However, all Japanese students clean their schools themselves.
In my experience, from elementary to high school, 6 to 18 years old, we cleaned almost all parts of school such as classrooms, football field, pool and gates, which taught us to maintain cleanliness in public.
After the last class is over, we clean our class everyday by ourselves, which I thought was the norm for students everywhere until just recently. We made groups with classmates and we cleaned our classrooms, and took turns cleaning areas like the pool, and other parts of the school that we often use. So I usually cleaned somewhere in the school with my friends twice a week after the class.
The most common place to clean is our classrooms, and there’s a specific way of cleaning that we followed.
I’ll tell you how we cleaned everyday.
- Put chairs on each desk
- Move chairs and desks to front of the classroom
- Sweep and wipe down the floor with a wet towel
- Move chairs and desks to the back of the classroom
- Do same as before on other side of the room
- Put everything back to the original position
To wipe down the floor with a wet towel, we definitely made it a game and had wiping up competitions. You just need to go faster than other competitors, but that makes it more efficient which I didn’t know when I was child, that was my teacher’s strategy I guess lol) and much more fun with your classmates even though we’re doing something which is not so much fun.
Overall, doing this for over a decade taught me how to clean and maintain cleanliness. I strongly believe that this ingrained mentality is one of the most amazing aspects of Japanese cultures.
Lack of trash cans in public
One thing I realized when I went to the US is trash cans are everywhere in urban areas. According to Hannah, the reason why there’s so many trash cans in the city in the US is to prevent people from throwing their trash on the road. However, in Japan, it’s kind of hard to find a trash can in the city. So if I have trash when I’m hanging out with my friends, I keep trash in my backpack (if I have a backpack with me) and throw it away at the station or convenience store, but I usually throw it away in my house because I can’t find any trash cans on the road. I clearly remember my friends in the US being weirded out by the fact I’m putting my trash into my backpack precisely even though there’s trash cans around the corner. My friends were like “ Why the hell are you keeping trash in the backpack” and I was like “Oops, I’m not in Japan right now “.
I think the reason we can maintain cleanliness in the city is because there’s no trash cans, so people are somewhat forced to be more responsible for the trash they make.
Well, those who never came to Japan before, get ready for finding trash cans! It’s pretty hard!
P.s. There’s so many public toilets in Japan compared to the US, which is great news for you, right? I’ll talk about the Japanese toilet in a different post!
Check also Japanese vs. American Bathroom out!