Hunkabutta Archives
11.03.02

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Did you know that Tokyo has very stringent recycling laws and complex waste disposal systems?

As you might imagine, a city of 30 million people, one that's pinched in between the mountains and the sea like Tokyo is, would have to take its garbage seriously.

You have to separate your glass, tin cans, newspaper, cardboard, and (optionally) your pet (plastic drink) bottles to be recycled. People dutifully use string to tie their old manga comics, newspapers, and flattened cardboard boxes into stacks.

Household waste is usually separated in to four categories: Raw, burnable, non-burnable, and over-sized.

Raw garbage is food waste. Because of the heat, food waste can get stinky really fast. Consequently, raw garbage, or nama gomi as it's called in Japanese, is disposed of very regularly.

Burnable garbage is comprised of things like pieces of paper, old clothes, and cut hair. This garbage is destined for the giant incinerators that ring the city, so basically anything that you wouldn't mind putting into a garbage fire in your own back-yard you can put into the burnable garbage pile.

Non-burnable garbage consists of things like plastic cleaning bottles, pens, rubber items, and anything else of noxious industrial origin. This garbage is bound for land-fills and ocean dumps.

Finally, there's over-sized garbage. This category is for anything larger than a toaster. In order to get rid of your over-sized items, such as furniture, you have to buy special stickers (quite expensive), stick them on your garbage, and then you have to call the special garbage collection people and tell them that they can come and pick it up. I don't know what happens to the over-sized garbage after it gets taken away, I suppose most of it ends up in landfills.

So there you have it. If you're ever in Japan, you'll know exactly what to do with your garbage.

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11.01.02

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Here I am, yet again, on my way home from work on the Yamanote train and composing my Hunkabutta post. No matter how many times I do it, I am still awe inspired by the combination of mobile writing and near instant global publication via the net.

It's like you're right here with me as I key these very words. I can almost feel your hot breath as you all press in upon me, like a crowd of deaf and blind ghosts waiting for me to tell you what there is to see and to hear.

I'll tell you what I can see.

Standing in front of me, reading a newspaper and hanging on to the handrail is a classic salaryman. Lets take a closer look at him, shall we.

He's about five foot eight inches (160 cm) tall, in his mid 50's, and weighs approximately 160 lbs. He's standing with his feet slightly apart and his shoulders hunched, he's reading his newspaper, which he has folded into quarters, and is hanging onto the safety loop with his left hand.

His hair is mostly black with some white mixed in, it's short and combed forward with no part.

His face is round and tanned, and he has exceptionally large earlobes, you might even describe them as 'pendulous.' He's wearing rimless eyeglasses of average thickness.

His suit is a dark gray with blue undertones, his shirt white,and his tie blue with a red and yellow diamond pattern. The buttons on his suit jacket are made of stainless steel, and are embossed with the image of a lion's head.

On his feet are black slip-on dress shoes, the kind with two little tassels that don't seem to have any function.

Can you see him now? I hope so.

That's all you get. I'm not going to show you anymore. Go back to New York, to Sweden, to Vancouver, to where ever it is that you come from.

This voyeuristic trip is over.

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10.29.02

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It's getting lonely here with Karen and Jack still in Canada.

After returning to Tokyo alone, I enjoyed my newfound free time and privacy for a few days, but then, suddenly the bed started to get bigger and colder, and the apartment started to seem quieter and dirtier, if you know what I'm getting at.

I'm looking forward to their return in November.

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I was surprised at the amount of interest shown in yesterday's picture of a salaryman vomiting in the street, and the comparative lack of interest in the picture of a homeless man picking meat out of an enormous tuna head in the garbage.

I guess the vomiting thing is kind of funny.

Today's pictures are all quirky, socially awkward moments.

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10.27.02

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I took the pictures that you see on Hunkabutta today in Ueno last night.

Ueno is a scruffy entertainment district on the north side of Tokyo. It's like an old man with a shiny gold tooth; ragged on the edges but with a hint of the spectacular underneath. Its brothels and massage parlors find their roots in the 'pleasure quarter' days of the Yoshiwara in old Edo.

If you want glitz, go to Ginza. If you want fashion, go to Shibuya. But if you want sleaze, the kind of sleaze that sticks to your shoes, the kind that makes you breath in deeply through your nostrils, then Ueno is the only place to be.

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