Our rubbish shame ... Nina ... 04/08/06

You would not believe how complicated putting out the rubbish is in Toge. Our first morning home alone in the house has begun with the shameful experience of having to walk back up to the communal rubbish area and ‘re-bag’ our burnable refuse under Komi san’s gentle guidance. At 8.00 am she was not our first caller though, cucumbers started to arrive at 7.15.
Each day you have to take one of 8 different kinds of rubbish or re-cycling to the village bins by 8.30. There is a diary with different colours for each day and unbelievably detailed instructions for each type of packaging, that has to have all labels removed and be washed. I guess considering the amount of packaging they use it’s a good thing, but I couldn’t see it catching on in Hackney.
The source of this morning’s shame was not incorrect rubbish content but the wrong bag – a stray black one - perhaps the correct clear plastic bag with “rubbish” written on the side is the one we inadvertently used to carry our models to a Tokyo meeting … the buyer from Tokyu Hands didn’t seem to mind.