House Chores

I find it's a lot easier here to do house chores, because the motivation is so much higher. In Toronto, you leave a dirty plate or leftover food on the counter before leaving the house, and it' fine when you come back. Here, you don't clean out the sink (from the food remains, they have a special basket to catch all the small food remains), and you come home from work and, well, don't want to be in the kitchen because of the smell. Since it's so hot, food goes bad quickly, so I have to extra-bag any food garbage before throwing it into the garbage bin. The reason is that garbage days are only twice a week (I need to check my manual to make sure), so if you don't do that, your garbage will start smelling in a day in this heat. Same of course with putting food away and washing dishes. There is no garbage chute in the apartments, and there are a lot of filters on any outlets that lead to the sewer system, because apparently the Japanese sewer system is very old and can't handle stuff that Toronto sewer system can handle.

There is a 22 page "Waste Guide Book" sitting on my desk, and I need to look through it today to figure out how to dispose of my garbage. I think it adds a bit of inconvenience to life, but I like that, because every time I reach for my garbage can I have to think twice whether I want to throw it out or not.

Actually, when you do grocery shopping you get plenty of containers for your food, so you really don't need to buy plastic containers for food and storage. Well, you still do, but you can make do with fewer of these things because food comes in such nice packages.