After eating at the sandwich shop in Sapporo, we had to carry our trash around all day if we didn't find one of the few trash cans at the train station. Trash is seen as something to take care of yourself and not burden other people with, so most people throw their trash away at their own house. I think it is absolutely amazing how clean Japan is with almost no public trash cans, but I do often wish there were more.
Japan is an island country with limited space, so they take recycling and separating waste very seriously. The simplest classifications they have for trash is burnable and non-burnable. From there non-burnable (what we think of as recycling) is separated by PET bottles, tin cans, and glass bottles. I see more places to deposit these non-burnables than burnables. I had to buy specific bags at the mall to put garbage in. Yellow bags are for burnable trash and green bags are for recyclables (but only one type of recyclable is allowed in each bag). I have heard that if you live in an actual neighborhood, the recycling and trash procedure is even more precise. Stuff like burnable and non-burnable is scheduled to be picked up around once a week or two, but other things like oversized trash (e.g. table) are only scheduled a few times a year. It can't just be put on the curb. I think batteries are also once a year in some places, so if you miss it you have to wait another year!
All of this makes sense to me in terms of the amount of space the country has and standards of cleanliness they have, but there are two things that are odd to me. First, paper is considered burnable trash, not recyclable like in the U.S. Second, Japan uses an amazingly large amount of plastic, often in situations we would not use it in the U.S.
