Trash talk

I am awake right now (or I guess I'd be sleep-blogging) but it's kind of strange. It's 7 a.m. and I normally don't get up for a few more hours. I have energy right now and I thought, Heck, why not tell everyone about it? So here I am.
NO clue what to write at the moment. That's rare, too. Guess I'll find a picture to post and see what comes out of that...

Garbage. :) Some of you may not know this, but Japan is kinda crazy, in the smartest possible way, about garbage. I live in Toyonaka City, and when we moved into our apartment, we found out that there are about 15 different ways to sort trash.

You've got flammable trash (food and paper goods), and then you have to remember to bag the food that might smell into a separate trash bag. That goes out Monday and Thursday. You then have non-recyclable stuff, which goes out on Friday. Paper items go out on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month, and glass goes out on the 2nd and 4th Monday of each month. You also have to bundle large amounts of cardboard with a certain type of plastic. Oh, and I can't forget about the "Toyonaka City Designated" Trash bags. *We also had to have a few of Casey's labmates translate the sheet of paper with all of the rules for us... yikes!*

So this brings up a few questions for me. When the hell do people learn how to do this correctly? I hope they teach this early on in life, and I assume they do. Don't get me wrong, I respect it! I am all for recycling, and also making life a little easier for the people who have to sort through the trash (because honestly, how enjoyable could that possibly be?). But do they have a class on this somewhere that I can take? As a foreigner, I am pretty sure I have managed to screw this up a few times. And what if they know that? Do they look through the trash and say, "Stupid foreigners must of done this"? Is it obvious to them that someone who was less educated on the subject may have accidentally put paper in the non-recycleable trash? (Gasp!) I understand why they do it, but I feel like I need a Trash Sorting for Dummies book.

This sounds like a bad episode of Seinfeld. I think I'll shut up now. Thanks for letting me rant this early in the morning. You'll probably hear from me again later- we are actually doing things this weekend so I'll try to keep you up to date. I am sure you are hanging on every word as it is!! LOL... too much sarcasm for one morning.

-Ashley