The Free Store...Or what to do with your "trash n' stuff"

When a person lives in a high rise apartment, no matter how small it is, one still piles up "trash n' stuff." In fact when living in such a small space, the "trash n'stuff" seems to grow like an invasion of horrible, reeking giant mushrooms that spring up overnight...but no, those are not mushrooms...upon closer inspection it appears that they are white plastic bags full of trash for recycling.

Each apartment has "the trash room." This is where you bring your "trash n' stuff." There are elaborate posters detailing the proper method for recycling the garbage. Of course for us foreigners, it's always a big guess as to what those posters mean. Apparently, there is a common complaint in Japanese apartments regarding foreigners who don't sort the trash properly. No matter how hard we try, we can never get the right stuff in the right bucket.

We have lived in two apartments now and I can see that apartment managers have their own quirks when it comes to sorting trash. In my current apartment, Suzuki-san wants the tabs on drink cans pulled off and put into a little jar. In the last apartment, Shimizu-san wanted something else...but I could never read the sign, so I don't know what that something else was...Fortunately, they have both been very nice folks and are quite forgiving about our inability to sort out the complexities of sorting out the trash.

There is one great thing about Japanese recycling procedures...and that is THE FREE STORE !!! At least that's what we foreigners have named it. Japanese people always seem to be moving. Whenever they switch apartments, the furniture often does not fit the configuration of the new rooms.... soooooo...entire contents of an apartment might show up in the recycle area. Too bad I don't surf. There was a great surf board in the free store for months.

The other thing about Japanese apartments is that you may never hear or see your neighbors. It is hard to believe that I am living in a city of MILLIONS. These people are very, very quiet. Either that or their construction is really soundproof. Sometimes I feel like I am in one of those Twilight Zone episodes where the entire population of Tokyo has been evacuated...except that they forgot to tell me about it...so I'm the only person left in this huge high rise. I haven't even see one ant or bug or spider. I guess 12 floors up is just too high for a bug to climb.

There was one instance when we were tempted to knock on someone's door. We noticed an unsavory odor coming from an apartment near the elevator. In our minds we ticked off the possibilities....maybe they left town and forgot to take out the trash - well, when they return, they'll have to take it out because the smell will knock them over....or maybe they left town and their little doggy died - well if so, it's already dead and when they return, they'll have to deal with it....or maybe the neighbor died...I know that sounds awful, but if we are going through the entire checklist of possibilities, we have to include that one - well, if they're dead, we can't help them - so, our rationale was, if the smell gets worse after two days, we'd better call someone....of course we don't know who that someone is supposed to be. We haven't figured that out yet. We just know that for an emergency, we press the button in our apartment that looks like a campfire... or dial 119.