I’m just curious, I’ve been to many beaches across the world but I have never seen beaches with this much trash before I came to Japan. Japan has a reputation for being a very clean and tidy country so, why is this?
Tides and currents. It’s a global problem and if you haven’t seen it anywhere else you probably haven’t travelled that much
You probably haven’t travelled all that much if you think Japan’s beaches are somehow *worse* than other beaches…
China, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia are in the locale.
Search for `island beach cleanup` on YouTube to get an idea of the extent of this problem globally.
Any beach that isn’t covered in trash is likely being cleaned up regularly to keep it that way.
We saw trash originally from Asia in islands off Washington state last year…
Inspired by yesterdays Nihonjinron Post, actual quote from one of my Japanese University professors:
Japan has less trash because we have less public bins, we recognise scarcity so just take it home.
All of our Trash in the Setonaikai is from Japan, 80% is from fishing Boats, 15% from Beach Activities and none from foreign Countries!
Also nothing come from the Rivers.
It is very dirty and we should force the fishing Union to change their System.
It must be more expensive for the Fisherman Union when they lose something, so they need to recover it and get cash back for broken Equipment.
I used to be part of a metal detecting group in Japan. We did a couple beaches but specialized in mountain trails. Let me just add as a side note that Japanese hikers apparently love leaving behind pull tabs and bottle caps from energy drinks, soda, & various alcohol. Sometimes we’d find whole cans/bottles, but the vast number of pull tabs was astounding and annoying because the ring up similar to coins on the detector.
The beaches (especially the abandoned ones) I’ve seen in northern Yamaguchi have so much plastic trash, and almost all of it is Korean labeled.
But japan is still using incredible amount of single usage plastic, pet bottle etc … I am always surprised how much trash i find in the rivers and this one dont come with the tide. Beaches doesnt look so bad for me except one in okinawa ishigakijima that was full of pet bottle obviously comming from the main land. Also having to pay to trash your stuff like sodai gomi push some people to just go to lost places and dump their stuff. I have also heard of black business taking trash and getting money but instead of bringing them to recycle/burning center, just trash it and get the money.
One reason that most Japanese streets and neighbourhoods are clean is because neighbourhood and local business organisations pick up litter and keep them clean.
Some beaches are cleaned regularly by volunteers but it’s only clean after they have finished.
I think it is rare for Japanese people to be first to throw garbage in the street people are going to think “if there it is already then hey, it’s ok isn’t it?”
Another reason that people have a good impression of Japan is because of carefully staged tourist pictures. There’s plenty of dirt, decay and bad architecture too.
I lived on a very remote Japanese island for 3 years and there was always trash washing up from China, Australia, The Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan itself. There are also many major shipping lanes that pass through it so if trash falls off the ship it’s taken up the current (I can’t tell you the amount of rubber boots and toothbrushes that wash up daily on the beach). It’s really quite an issue due to the large amounts of marine life that also use the current.
My local beach is pretty nice. 20 years ago… It was a garbage dump basically. I can’t even say things are changing. Just depends where you go I think.
Because Japanese people honestly aren’t that clean and tidy. If you’ve ever seen inside 75%+ of Japanese people’s homes… then enough said.
If you go out late at night or really early in the morning you’ll also see a lot of trash. People in general are not super clean, and a lot of them litter, it’s just that pretty much every business and neighbourhood has people who get up early and go clean up the mess before many people will see it. I’ve been that employee before, who had to go out and pick up all the cans and masks and bottles and tissues and other trash out of the flower beds and off the sidewalk outside our company.
So basically the difference between here and other places is people pick up trash that does occur generally. I guess people just don’t care that much at the beaches, there isn’t really any staff or businesses around to pick it up, maybe it gets picked up in the early morning or evening though?
When I lived in Hokkaido, there was an extraordinary amount of trash on the Pacific coast. Some of it was Japanese and washed up, some of it was illegally dumped, and some of it (usually industrial refuse) was from Korea and Russia. Interestingly the Sea of Okhotsk was better, so I imagine it has a lot to do with the currents since I always went to unmarked beaches.
Compared to a lot of countries, Japan has a lot of coastline, much of it unmanaged. I think in many other places, if you’re looking at a clean beach, it’s because someone’s keeping it that way. Comparisons to the Atlantic (US east coast or Europe) aren’t really fair considering the trash heap in the Pacific and the fact that much of the world’s garbage is (was?) imported to various countries in the region which then gets washed up with the Kuroshio current as mentioned in another post.
Because a good percentage of single use plastic is not recycled.
The bays are bad bc the current brings in the trash and it stays. Bays are usually kinda gross. There’s plenty of not trashy beaches
Enoshima is pretty insane for trash. You think there would be some garbage can installed and a crew hired to take care of it as a full time job… it’s a shame because it’s such a beautiful space
Some of the beaches on the Sea of Japan side are shocking but I guess a lot of it is from trawlers and other countries. And because these are not really popular swimming beaches in low populated areas no one really cleans them up.
Rivers are bad too, I see so many recreational fishermen dumping their rubbish on the levee banks or sides of the road around where we live.
Japan has a reputation for many many things that aren’t true (but you can bet locals blame foreigners for).
Last few times I was on a beach (one up in Hokkaido, one in Chiba), I didn’t see much trash. I wasn’t actively looking for it (that’s not generally why I go to beaches), but I honestly don’t recall seeing what I would call an offensive amount of trash.
According to my students when I lived on the sea of Japan coast, “it comes from China.” Boy they love their pokkari sweat in China don’t they?
Coming from Australia, the amount of trash on the beach was a real shocker! I don’t know if there are paid people picking it up at home or if people are just more respectful about not leaving it in the first place.
I did a morning beach clean up on Ose beach in Shizuoka, a popular dive spot. Produce a Gomi bag full of rubbish and get a plate of yakisoba. People were literally filling their bags with leaves from the nearby wood, and even lumps of decaying tree trunk. Me and my friends stuck around at the end to help the staff clean up the hundreds of abandoned styrofoam yakisoba plates and waribashi everybody had dropped on the beach.
Ishigaki beaches were covered in trash from abroad.
Roughly 20% Korean, 60% Chinese, 20% others (by the languages on the trash).
Ishigaki’s location may make it different to other beaches in Japan.
Source, did beach cleanup there twice
There are no public trash cans anywhere because of a terrorist attack that happened in Tokyo in the 90s. That along w/ how…tedious… their garbage separation rules are, I’m assuming people leave their trash at the beach because they simply don’t want to deal with it. I’ve lived in Okinawa for a decade, people leave all sorts of fast food bags and wrappers, cans, bottles, you name it on the beaches and seawalls.
Secluded beaches are filled with stuff people have had to dump.. things like old mattresses and dishes, household stuff, are all over the place. I was surprised when I first saw it because Japan has always had the reputation for being very clean. Oki is beautiful but definitely littered more than you’d expect.
The elderly in my neighborhood do a fantastic job keeping our area clean. You’ll see them out early in the morning or later in the evening gathering trash, pulling weeds, etc., but if you’re in an area that doesn’t get some extra tlc, you’ll unfortunately see a lot garbage around.
18-25 year olds love the beach and mostly treat it like a Roppongi club / pick up spot in summer. They couldn’t give a crap about its condition because they’re only there for a few days.
Families, surfers, and old people usually pick up after themselves.
They’re more concerned with patrolling for tattoos than trash, lol.
Suma beach used to be horrible.. people were low class .. left their garbage everywhere .. much better now
From what I’ve heard, having only been to few beaches, in some cases it is problem of holidaying Japanese breaking their normal behaviors.
It is a bit of a false equivalence, but the British have always been considered to repressed rule followers of Europe, and at home on the beaches or at resort towns we are relatively well behaved.
But, then take a brit and put them on a Greek Beach or Spanish resort and its bedlam. ‘Brits abroad’ is shorthand for astonishing debauchery.
I think, it’s on smaller scale (it is Japan after all), but this is the collective Japanese equivalent..aside from whoring it up in Thailand.
Sorry, I’ll go home.
I think it really depends which beaches. I have been to many Japanese beaches where there was little to no trash at all. I remember going to beaches near Chiba as a kid and can’t recall it ever being that dirty.
Earlier this year we did a beach clean up near Enoshima and it was just cigarette butts and the occasional styrofoam package. So I really think it depends on the location.
Don’t get me wrong, Japan is clean but it’s not the pristine trash-free paradise some people claim it is. Good example is walking around Roppongi on a Saturday morning, you will see a fair amount of empty coffee/beer cans among other trash.
I live in Japan on a smaller island. We get tones of trash from all over Asia after every Typhoon. The surfing community organizes beach clean ups after each storm but the trash just keeps coming
Simple. Super small beaches, Zillions of people.
If you get a chance to go to Utsumi Beach, on Ise Bay near Nagoya, it’s the nicest I’ve been to in Honshu. Minimal trash and the sea bed is pure sand, no nasty stuff to step on…
I’m Japanese and I live near the sea in the western part of Japan (Tohoku), when I was younger I used to go to the beach every day in the summer. Of course, there is also trash from Japan but there is a lot of trash from Korean, Chinese, and often Southeast Asian languages (although I can’t read their language). Anyway, I’ve been wanting to solve this problem for a long time so thank you for this topic. People should keep the beaches clean and people shouldn’t throw garbage in public places all over the world I’m sorry my English is still not good
There’s a tractor that goes every morning in Spain with a big “comb” cleaning up the (little) trash there is. There is little because it’s the Mediterranean, but mainly because it’s cleaned everyday.
The problem is that “beach cleanup” some are discussing here takes dozens of volunteers to clean up a beach, which is very inefficient. With some machines and gvmt investment (to make it a regular thing) you can clean up multiple beaches per day per machine. Hey, and that’d also bring some jobs to the beaches, which tend to be inaka-ish.
(which is funny now that I think about it, we are a much “dirtier” country in general than Japan but our cleaning infra is great and thus the beaches remain cleaner than Japan’s)
Living in the southern most islands, we do get alot of open ocean trash washes ashore on the more wild ( no developed, not wild as in crazy) beaches but the majority of it is just nasty fucks that don’t take their trash with them when they leave.
As others have said – it depends on the beach.
Coincidentally, I have just sat down after walking on the beach (living on the North side of Amami Oshima). I filled a carrier bag with rubbish – we usually try to take a bag or two out to pick it up. According to the study (see other comments) only about 1% of our rubbish comes from Japan. The overwhelming majority is from China.
Why so much? Ocean currents, winds and tides wash it up here. The coast is fairly thinly populated. Though the community (including us for now) does try to pick it up, there is just so much of it and so much coast and so few people.
As some others have said, Japanese people are nowhere near as clean as we like to believe, and recycling in Japan and elsewhere does not work the way we’re led to believe it works. Sure, Japan is in general way cleaner than other countries, but I’ve myself seen Japanese people dump trash in rivers and there’s always garbage in the waterways.
I understand why there’s almost no public trash cans in Japan but it still seems like a little bit of a knee jerk reaction so many years later. Having them around would help a lot
Another reason is the beaches in Japan are a magnet for scumbag gyaru, bosozoku, chimpira and yanki groups. It’s not cool for them to dispose of their rubbish properly so they usually leave it.
A lot of areas of Japan aren’t tidy or clean, I think there is a lot of undue reputation with regards to kindness and cleanliness and technological advancement that benefits them so they run with it.
It’s pretty insane actually, kind of unfathomable why it’s not being cleaned up.
Went to a beach around Echizen and it was just endless trash of all kinds. Ropes, bottles, thousands of small plastic bits and tons of dead fish.
btw, I tried posting it yesterday in both /r/japan and /r/japanlife and the mods did not allow it, wondering why?
It’s because the elderly aren’t paid to clean up the beaches at night and the early morning in the way they get paid to clean up city streets.
People in the cities are just as dirty, but staff and jinzai silver center pay people to pick up after them.
I’ve witnessed people throw trash on the ground, Japanese people, before anyone tries to say something about foreigners. I’ve seen people toss stuff onto the train tracks and walk off. People are dirty. If there wasn’t a small army of low wage workers constantly picking up after people in downtown areas, they would be disgusting.
45 comments
Tides and currents. It’s a global problem and if you haven’t seen it anywhere else you probably haven’t travelled that much
You probably haven’t travelled all that much if you think Japan’s beaches are somehow *worse* than other beaches…
China, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia are in the locale.
Search for `island beach cleanup` on YouTube to get an idea of the extent of this problem globally.
Any beach that isn’t covered in trash is likely being cleaned up regularly to keep it that way.
We saw trash originally from Asia in islands off Washington state last year…
Inspired by yesterdays Nihonjinron Post, actual quote from one of my Japanese University professors:
Japan has less trash because we have less public bins, we recognise scarcity so just take it home.
All of our Trash in the Setonaikai is from Japan, 80% is from fishing Boats, 15% from Beach Activities and none from foreign Countries!
Also nothing come from the Rivers.
It is very dirty and we should force the fishing Union to change their System.
It must be more expensive for the Fisherman Union when they lose something, so they need to recover it and get cash back for broken Equipment.
I used to be part of a metal detecting group in Japan. We did a couple beaches but specialized in mountain trails. Let me just add as a side note that Japanese hikers apparently love leaving behind pull tabs and bottle caps from energy drinks, soda, & various alcohol. Sometimes we’d find whole cans/bottles, but the vast number of pull tabs was astounding and annoying because the ring up similar to coins on the detector.
The beaches (especially the abandoned ones) I’ve seen in northern Yamaguchi have so much plastic trash, and almost all of it is Korean labeled.
But japan is still using incredible amount of single usage plastic, pet bottle etc …
I am always surprised how much trash i find in the rivers and this one dont come with the tide. Beaches doesnt look so bad for me except one in okinawa ishigakijima that was full of pet bottle obviously comming from the main land.
Also having to pay to trash your stuff like sodai gomi push some people to just go to lost places and dump their stuff. I have also heard of black business taking trash and getting money but instead of bringing them to recycle/burning center, just trash it and get the money.
One reason that most Japanese streets and neighbourhoods are clean is because neighbourhood and local business organisations pick up litter and keep them clean.
Some beaches are cleaned regularly by volunteers but it’s only clean after they have finished.
I think it is rare for Japanese people to be first to throw garbage in the street people are going to think “if there it is already then hey, it’s ok isn’t it?”
Another reason that people have a good impression of Japan is because of carefully staged tourist pictures. There’s plenty of dirt, decay and bad architecture too.
The [Kuroshio Current](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuroshio_Current) goes from South to North and brings a lot of plastic up with it.
I lived on a very remote Japanese island for 3 years and there was always trash washing up from China, Australia, The Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan itself. There are also many major shipping lanes that pass through it so if trash falls off the ship it’s taken up the current (I can’t tell you the amount of rubber boots and toothbrushes that wash up daily on the beach). It’s really quite an issue due to the large amounts of marine life that also use the current.
My local beach is pretty nice. 20 years ago… It was a garbage dump basically. I can’t even say things are changing. Just depends where you go I think.
Because Japanese people honestly aren’t that clean and tidy. If you’ve ever seen inside 75%+ of Japanese people’s homes… then enough said.
If you go out late at night or really early in the morning you’ll also see a lot of trash. People in general are not super clean, and a lot of them litter, it’s just that pretty much every business and neighbourhood has people who get up early and go clean up the mess before many people will see it. I’ve been that employee before, who had to go out and pick up all the cans and masks and bottles and tissues and other trash out of the flower beds and off the sidewalk outside our company.
So basically the difference between here and other places is people pick up trash that does occur generally. I guess people just don’t care that much at the beaches, there isn’t really any staff or businesses around to pick it up, maybe it gets picked up in the early morning or evening though?
When I lived in Hokkaido, there was an extraordinary amount of trash on the Pacific coast. Some of it was Japanese and washed up, some of it was illegally dumped, and some of it (usually industrial refuse) was from Korea and Russia. Interestingly the Sea of Okhotsk was better, so I imagine it has a lot to do with the currents since I always went to unmarked beaches.
Compared to a lot of countries, Japan has a lot of coastline, much of it unmanaged. I think in many other places, if you’re looking at a clean beach, it’s because someone’s keeping it that way. Comparisons to the Atlantic (US east coast or Europe) aren’t really fair considering the trash heap in the Pacific and the fact that much of the world’s garbage is (was?) imported to various countries in the region which then gets washed up with the Kuroshio current as mentioned in another post.
Because a good percentage of single use plastic is not recycled.
The bays are bad bc the current brings in the trash and it stays. Bays are usually kinda gross. There’s plenty of not trashy beaches
Enoshima is pretty insane for trash. You think there would be some garbage can installed and a crew hired to take care of it as a full time job… it’s a shame because it’s such a beautiful space
Some of the beaches on the Sea of Japan side are shocking but I guess a lot of it is from trawlers and other countries. And because these are not really popular swimming beaches in low populated areas no one really cleans them up.
Rivers are bad too, I see so many recreational fishermen dumping their rubbish on the levee banks or sides of the road around where we live.
Japan has a reputation for many many things that aren’t true (but you can bet locals blame foreigners for).
Last few times I was on a beach (one up in Hokkaido, one in Chiba), I didn’t see much trash. I wasn’t actively looking for it (that’s not generally why I go to beaches), but I honestly don’t recall seeing what I would call an offensive amount of trash.
According to my students when I lived on the sea of Japan coast, “it comes from China.” Boy they love their pokkari sweat in China don’t they?
Coming from Australia, the amount of trash on the beach was a real shocker! I don’t know if there are paid people picking it up at home or if people are just more respectful about not leaving it in the first place.
I did a morning beach clean up on Ose beach in Shizuoka, a popular dive spot. Produce a Gomi bag full of rubbish and get a plate of yakisoba. People were literally filling their bags with leaves from the nearby wood, and even lumps of decaying tree trunk. Me and my friends stuck around at the end to help the staff clean up the hundreds of abandoned styrofoam yakisoba plates and waribashi everybody had dropped on the beach.
Ishigaki beaches were covered in trash from abroad.
Roughly 20% Korean, 60% Chinese, 20% others (by the languages on the trash).
Ishigaki’s location may make it different to other beaches in Japan.
Source, did beach cleanup there twice
There are no public trash cans anywhere because of a terrorist attack that happened in Tokyo in the 90s. That along w/ how…tedious… their garbage separation rules are, I’m assuming people leave their trash at the beach because they simply don’t want to deal with it. I’ve lived in Okinawa for a decade, people leave all sorts of fast food bags and wrappers, cans, bottles, you name it on the beaches and seawalls.
Secluded beaches are filled with stuff people have had to dump.. things like old mattresses and dishes, household stuff, are all over the place. I was surprised when I first saw it because Japan has always had the reputation for being very clean. Oki is beautiful but definitely littered more than you’d expect.
The elderly in my neighborhood do a fantastic job keeping our area clean. You’ll see them out early in the morning or later in the evening gathering trash, pulling weeds, etc., but if you’re in an area that doesn’t get some extra tlc, you’ll unfortunately see a lot garbage around.
18-25 year olds love the beach and mostly treat it like a Roppongi club / pick up spot in summer. They couldn’t give a crap about its condition because they’re only there for a few days.
Families, surfers, and old people usually pick up after themselves.
They’re more concerned with patrolling for tattoos than trash, lol.
Suma beach used to be horrible.. people were low class .. left their garbage everywhere .. much better now
From what I’ve heard, having only been to few beaches, in some cases it is problem of holidaying Japanese breaking their normal behaviors.
It is a bit of a false equivalence, but the British have always been considered to repressed rule followers of Europe, and at home on the beaches or at resort towns we are relatively well behaved.
But, then take a brit and put them on a Greek Beach or Spanish resort and its bedlam. ‘Brits abroad’ is shorthand for astonishing debauchery.
I think, it’s on smaller scale (it is Japan after all), but this is the collective Japanese equivalent..aside from whoring it up in Thailand.
Sorry, I’ll go home.
I think it really depends which beaches. I have been to many Japanese beaches where there was little to no trash at all. I remember going to beaches near Chiba as a kid and can’t recall it ever being that dirty.
Earlier this year we did a beach clean up near Enoshima and it was just cigarette butts and the occasional styrofoam package. So I really think it depends on the location.
Don’t get me wrong, Japan is clean but it’s not the pristine trash-free paradise some people claim it is. Good example is walking around Roppongi on a Saturday morning, you will see a fair amount of empty coffee/beer cans among other trash.
I live in Japan on a smaller island. We get tones of trash from all over Asia after every Typhoon. The surfing community organizes beach clean ups after each storm but the trash just keeps coming
Simple. Super small beaches, Zillions of people.
If you get a chance to go to Utsumi Beach, on Ise Bay near Nagoya, it’s the nicest I’ve been to in Honshu. Minimal trash and the sea bed is pure sand, no nasty stuff to step on…
I’m Japanese and I live near the sea in the western part of Japan (Tohoku), when I was younger I used to go to the beach every day in the summer. Of course, there is also trash from Japan but there is a lot of trash from Korean, Chinese, and often Southeast Asian languages (although I can’t read their language). Anyway, I’ve been wanting to solve this problem for a long time so thank you for this topic. People should keep the beaches clean and people shouldn’t throw garbage in public places all over the world I’m sorry my English is still not good
There’s a tractor that goes every morning in Spain with a big “comb” cleaning up the (little) trash there is. There is little because it’s the Mediterranean, but mainly because it’s cleaned everyday.
The problem is that “beach cleanup” some are discussing here takes dozens of volunteers to clean up a beach, which is very inefficient. With some machines and gvmt investment (to make it a regular thing) you can clean up multiple beaches per day per machine. Hey, and that’d also bring some jobs to the beaches, which tend to be inaka-ish.
(which is funny now that I think about it, we are a much “dirtier” country in general than Japan but our cleaning infra is great and thus the beaches remain cleaner than Japan’s)
Living in the southern most islands, we do get alot of open ocean trash washes ashore on the more wild ( no developed, not wild as in crazy) beaches but the majority of it is just nasty fucks that don’t take their trash with them when they leave.
As others have said – it depends on the beach.
Coincidentally, I have just sat down after walking on the beach (living on the North side of Amami Oshima). I filled a carrier bag with rubbish – we usually try to take a bag or two out to pick it up. According to the study (see other comments) only about 1% of our rubbish comes from Japan. The overwhelming majority is from China.
Why so much? Ocean currents, winds and tides wash it up here. The coast is fairly thinly populated. Though the community (including us for now) does try to pick it up, there is just so much of it and so much coast and so few people.
Illustration of [the Great Pacific Garbage Patch](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-pacific-garbage-patch/). A lot of garbage does come from SE Asia, too, but not only.
As some others have said, Japanese people are nowhere near as clean as we like to believe, and recycling in Japan and elsewhere does not work the way we’re led to believe it works. Sure, Japan is in general way cleaner than other countries, but I’ve myself seen Japanese people dump trash in rivers and there’s always garbage in the waterways.
I understand why there’s almost no public trash cans in Japan but it still seems like a little bit of a knee jerk reaction so many years later. Having them around would help a lot
Another reason is the beaches in Japan are a magnet for scumbag gyaru, bosozoku, chimpira and yanki groups. It’s not cool for them to dispose of their rubbish properly so they usually leave it.
A lot of areas of Japan aren’t tidy or clean, I think there is a lot of undue reputation with regards to kindness and cleanliness and technological advancement that benefits them so they run with it.
It’s pretty insane actually, kind of unfathomable why it’s not being cleaned up.
Went to a beach around Echizen and it was just endless trash of all kinds. Ropes, bottles, thousands of small plastic bits and tons of dead fish.
See for yourself:
https://imgur.io/a/j6HnPNR
This was not a remote beach either, it was 10 min walk from the station.
Just see a nice sample I took in Aomori: [https://imgur.com/a/bm4FZoq](https://imgur.com/a/bm4FZoq)
btw, I tried posting it yesterday in both /r/japan and /r/japanlife and the mods did not allow it, wondering why?
It’s because the elderly aren’t paid to clean up the beaches at night and the early morning in the way they get paid to clean up city streets.
People in the cities are just as dirty, but staff and jinzai silver center pay people to pick up after them.
I’ve witnessed people throw trash on the ground, Japanese people, before anyone tries to say something about foreigners. I’ve seen people toss stuff onto the train tracks and walk off. People are dirty. If there wasn’t a small army of low wage workers constantly picking up after people in downtown areas, they would be disgusting.