Aug 10, 2023
To:chibiandreea
Yeah, it's a famous contradiction. You won't find much litter in Japanese cities, but you also won't find many public trash cans. That's not to say they don't exist anywhere, but after the 1995 sarin gas attack, most public trash cans were removed, and almost 30 years later, they haven't come back.
There are other reasons too. There are rules about separating trash into categories like burnable and non-burnable, and those rules vary somewhat by city, so it's safer to have a local resident help out.
For pet droppings specifically, what most people do is get these bags with a toilet paper lining. This makes it easy to scoop up the droppings and wrap it in the tp within the bag. Then, when they get home, they can empty the bag into the toilet, tp and all, flush it, and then discard the bag.
But that's a lot of detail. It's probably safer just to be vague when it comes to garbage disposal in stories set in Japan. It's what I do. Otherwise you risk spending too many words on it and possibly getting something slightly wrong.
