An article last month regarding trash on the trail to Mount Fuji quoted a 20-year-old volunteer university student as saying, "I'd hate for people to see the trash around here and think it means Japan is a culture of garbage."
Here in Tokyo, the city is one giant ashtray. Cigarette butts, plastic wrappers and empty tobacco cartons are everywhere. Smokers at the local children's park puff away, apparently oblivious to the harm they cause to children. Even more shocking are the cigarette butts in the water fountain, flower beds and even the sandbox where children play!
Every week, yet another Japanese company president apologizes on TV because his company did something illegal. From Meat Hope's ("I hope it's meat!") bogus beef, a confectioner's stale cakes, an English-teaching school's crap contracts, unlicensed nurses and insider trading, to the whole Livedoor scandal, one may wonder whether it's considered OK to screw people over in Japan as long as you apologize afterward.
Adding insult to injury is Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Cabinet of incompetent buffoons. Health minister Hakuo Yanagisawa called women "baby-making machines"; the defense minister justified the use of atomic bombs (and then resigned); and Abe himself whitewashes the issue of "comfort women." And don't forget the mess of a pension system, school bullying, police coercion of suspects or the questionable racial tolerance of our very own Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara.
One might be forgiven, therefore, for suspecting at times that Japan already is a culture of garbage.
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