[franciscop]

I have to agree and disagree :)

First, it's not clean, it's just different way of unclean and only during certain periods of the day. But during too many hours of the day in popular areas it's normal to see literal piles of trash on the street covered in rats, and in the morning with crows.

On the other hand, there's no littering, virtually no homelessness (nor their encampments, etc) and finally no cars on the street, which makes the city look a lot cleaner.

"Nobody in Tokyo cares about what their house looks like from the outside" => completely agree, my pet peeve here is that one of the best towns geographically speaking of Japan is probably the ugliest town I've seen in my life in a 1st world country (Kawaguchiko, with the beautiful lake, lush forest and Fuji San nearby).

"never seen more miserable public parks" again have to agree, the median local park is taken out of a horror movie. Though there are* a bunch of very, very beautiful ones!

[seanmcdirmid]

> On the other hand, there's no littering, virtually no homelessness (nor their encampments, etc) and finally no cars on the street, which makes the city look a lot cleaner.

Last time I visited Tokyo in 2016 there was clearly an encampment at the Ueno park. And that wasn’t the first time I saw an encampment in Japan (visiting Tokyo in 2008 I saw a few in Tokyo and Osaka). However, Japanese homeless encampments are always very clean and well organized. It’s a completely different feel from the states (even if they definitely exist).

[franciscop]

That's why I said virtually; in Tokyo you know where you saw one at some point as a curiosity. In many European cities just walking around aimlessly you have high chances of seeing some homeless people. In SF I had to literally jump over homeless' people stuff to walk down multiple streets in my last visit.

[seanmcdirmid]

I wasn't looking for encampments in Japan but found them anyways. Ueno train station and the park behind it is obviously a high traffic destination. And in Osaka, we were just walking around randomly. Homelessness is common and visible enough that to say it virtually doesn't exist is not really accurate.

[karaokeyoga]

"Tokyo Ueno Station" is a well-received novel written about the homeless population in the adjacent park. https://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Ueno-Station-Yu-Miri/dp/0593187...

[bluepizza]

> But during too many hours of the day in popular areas it's normal to see literal piles of trash on the street covered in rats, and in the morning with crows.

Apart from the worst parts of Roppongi on a Monday morning, I have never ever seen this.

[franciscop]

Trash days 5~8am, normal days in any place with many restaurants 11pm~8am basically (Shibuya, Ebisu, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, etc).

[marak830]

That would be more attributed to the multiple day trash picking depending on which type, though right?

I mean Tuesday: burnable waste, wed cardboard, Thurs clothes and Fri other, will tend to have trash in the designated areas, on each of those days.

Edit:spelling (Note:days and trash types differ a lot per area, but it's a good generalisation based off of my location).

[franciscop]

That's one thing for sure, but I attribute it most to the lack of dumpsters. I am not sure why they were banned, the trash cans supposedly because of terrorism, but the larger containers/dumpsters would make the city so much cleaner and better.

Tip: when there's a typhoon, restaurants close and there's no trash on the street, the rats invade nearby shops looking desperately for food:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkpV_fCeuIE

[bombcar]

To be fair to Tokyo I doubt there's a major city in the world that doesn't have rats unless rats can't live in a super hot desert or frozen tundra.

It's a matter of how contained/controlled/visible they are.

[selimthegrim]

Calgary and Edmonton.