Today we took it quite slow. We hung out in the apartment late, then took the train over to the Toy park in Ginza where Camille bought a dress designer toy. In the afternoon, we went to the “Foreign Language” floor of a large bookstore and bought some manga books. Rob had us go through the shoe sale in a large department store, which was insane.
We took the train to go visit a school that teaches English and to meet with a kids’ music blogger and his students. That was lots of fun to sit down with some 7/8 year old boys and talk to them about what they do each day.
Back at the apartment, we settled in for the evening. Rob went over to the station to get us reservations on the train to the airport while I made spaghetti for the girls.
From what we saw, Japan in general is not very conservation minded. Whenever we bought something, it came with extra plastic bags and extra wrapping. Quite astonishing the amount of waste that is generated!
Oh, that sounds fun!
The packaging thing is weird for a country without that much room for landfill. Or maybe they recycle a lot?
They do recycle, but not enough, I think. One of their “trash choices” is “combustible”. I was surprised by the packaging and waste; I really thought Japan would be a country with a high level of conservationism.
The NYT had an article this week saying that Japanese consumption of electricity is 50% of the US, less than any other industrialized nation.