Scarcity and Conservation in Japan!

Hello!

How are you doing?

Since arriving in Japan, one thing that I have noticed is a sense of scarcity and conservation in daily Japanese life.

I have noticed this a lot at school. If a room is not in use, the lights are always turned off. Teachers are in and out of the copy room all day, but the lights are rarely turned on unless absolutely necessary. One time, I was using a spare classroom to do an online meeting and one of the teachers reminded me to shut off the lights in the room when I left.

Also, various school items are frequently re-used. A lot of things I notice, though, might be more commonplace in America that I realize. I have never worked directly in an American school and my time at elementary was so long ago that I have forgotten a lot of how things were done. But, in the staff room, if you have extra copies of a worksheet after class and the backside of the paper is blank, teachers will neatly place those papers in a box so that another teacher can re-use the blank side of the paper.

So, from time to time, you will get a printout from another teacher or staff member and the backside of the paper will be related to some random thing that took place long ago.

Related to paper, construction paper is also somewhat closely monitored - supplies like that are kept in a locked room. To get access to it, you have to grab a special key from near the assistant principal's desk.

Furthermore, you see conservation in things that I have mentioned in the past - there are no cleaning staff for the schools as students and teachers make time to clean up the school almost every day. Elementary students also serve as the lunch staff for their fellow students - carrying pots of food back to their classroom to serve their classmates.

I think I have also mentioned that at my elementary, there are no specific gym-only teachers - classroom teachers take on that responsibility. Although some teachers trade responsibilities - one teacher might teach gym class for another teacher's class in exchange for that teacher teaching English to his or her class. We do have specialized teachers for art and music, though.

And we had one teacher miss a week or two of classes (due to COVID, I believe), so various teachers within the school covered that teacher's class. Even the assistant principal taught the class for several hours a day in the teacher's absence.

As I previously talked about as well, there is not really a concept of "substitute" teacher in my school - there are some teachers at the school without specific classroom assignments who will fill in the rare case of a teacher absence. Or, school administration might substitute. So, if there is a "substitute" teacher, it will be a teacher or staff member that the students see every day anyways and might even regularly have as a teacher for their gym period or another class.

In terms of resource use, I believe that I have mentioned this before, but to get hot water at my school you specifically have to turn on a gas water heater. Otherwise, you will just get cold water. One time, I turned on the water heater and stepped away for a moment to talk to someone, and a school staff member rushed over to turn off the heater while I was away. Even though I was planning to return in just a moment. Same at home - if you want hot water, you have to specifically activate your water heater.

Also, as many of you probably know, Japan is famous for keeping old items in use for a long time. You see this a lot with trains - in some of the photos I have taken, several of them have been of very classic trains that still run in different cities. Several of the regular trains I take have a certain vintage feel to them - sitting down in the train is sometimes almost like sitting in an old, comfortable couch.

One must also be very careful about their household trash. At home, I have to separate my trash into four main categories - burnable items, plastic wrappers/containers and plastic bottles or cans. And you have specific garbage bags that you use for each type of trash. Burnable items are put into a big, blue garbage bag while plastic wrappers/containers are put into an orange bag.

I think that this also goes along with Japan's conservation efforts - as separating your trash makes it easier for the local government to recycle items and incinerate the rest.

I believe I mentioned early on that the components of a plastic bottle must be separated into several different categories - the bottle wrapper and cap go into the "wrapper/container" bag while the bottle goes into the bottle bag.

I have heard stories that if you live in more rural areas, the city will return your full garbage bags to you if you fail to sort your bags correctly. I do not think that really happens in Kobe. For my garbage, we put our bags in a communal trash area and it would be hard to trace a particular bag back to its individual owner.

But, most of the bags are made of see-through plastic and I think this serves as social pressure - you have to carry a clear bag of trash to the communal trash area and if you have something in your bag that is incorrect, there is the risk that someone else will see you doing it.

And, the communal trash aspect helps remind people when it is time to do trash - if you forgot it was trash day but see trash piled up at the community trash spot, it will remind you to go back and grab your bag.

On the other hand, though, as Japan has slightly increased the difficulty of throwing things away, this (among other things) can lead to certain people accumulating tons of trash. There is a specific Japanese term for households who hoard trash items - gomi yashiki. Gomi is the word for trash and yashiki means "residence." Aka, trash house. There is one gomi yashiki that I see every day on the way to work - trash is piled throughout the house and almost overflowing onto the sidewalk.

Originally, when I wrote this update, I went on to talk about a few more things, but I will leave those for next week's update! Another holiday period is approaching in Japan (Golden Week) so I will be doing a little bit more traveling at the end of this week. My school has a full week of school this coming week, but will be off Monday thru Thursday the week following.

And, sorry, no photos this week!

Until then,

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