You want some plastic with that?

What follows is an observation/rant/idle ramble about one of the most commonly observed oddities of Japan… packaging. Which may not be quite what you expected. And neither was it when I first arrived here either, though it’s something you notice soon enough, even if you’re just visiting. The Japanese have turned packaging into an obsessive, compulsive disorder, or if you want to be nicer, an art. Or if you want to be realistic, a pain in the backside.

For a country so obsessed with recycling and various other ‘green’ activities (to an extent anyways), their ability to undo any good the recycling may produce by over packaging goods never ceases to amaze. Whether you’re buying a single, small item or shopping for the week, you’ll find yourself with more plastic bags (of various sizes) than you could possibly ever need.

Wanna buy a can or milk from the conbini? Best grab it before the overeager staff put it in a bag. Even better – go to the conbini to buy some recycling bags (which are already pre-packaged in their own plastic cover), and they’ll be put into another plastic bag for you to carry home. Which surely must be causing some sort of space-time continuum tear somewhere, somehow.

Fancy a quick donut? Pop down to Mister Donut, place your order for one piece and watch the sugary treat being put into a paper bag, along with a plastic napkin for you to eat with, with is then folded meticulously and should you wish to, said paper bag can then be placed inside a plastic bag for you to carry. What about that tasty looking sea chicken onigiri you were eyeing up? Well if you’ve managed to avoid it being put into a bag for you, you’ve still got to fight with its own pre-packaging which seems to involve some sort of secret technique to be undone so you can get to the onigiri (or more likely I’ve still not figured out how to take it apart without ruining it). And by the time you’ve got to it, one hand is full of onigiri while the other is full of plastic, with no bin in sight (if you’ve strayed too far from the conbini that is).

While this tendency to over package everything can lead to a fair amount of head shaking and wondering why anybody would want to go to such lengths, it’s also pretty amazing. Especially when it comes to the meticulousness (is that a word?) of the task. Packaging definitely could hold a place as some sort of valid sport here. It’s neat, efficient and well done, it just also happens to be too much most of the time. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that this attention to detail in packaging has to do with how much importance the Japanese sometimes attribute to appearances (anyone with anymore info on that please drop a comment, I can’t remember exactly), and I can see why that is to an extent. With the extremities to which you are subjected when dealing with the service industry in the first place, an attention to detail in packaging is kind of par for the course. If people are going to be overly polite to you, they might as well be overly nice to your purchased goods as well I guess.

Coming from a Western culture, where it’s common to refuse packaging when you feel as a customer you don’t need it (though god knows I should have taken it sometimes, would have saved all those milk bottles smashing on the road), this excessive packaging can easily become a wind up. I don’t need fifty bags to carry my 3 items, I don’t need my meat, fish and ice products put into separate plastic bags before going into a bigger one, I want to grab my donut and eat it on the way out and I don’t want to wait that extra 30 seconds for you to fold my paper bag on the corner. But thanks anyways. I know I sound rude, but it’s true. It might look good, but I fail to see the convenience. Especially as this is compounded by a lack of available rubbish bins in the streets. So long and thanks for all the packaging… I’ll just stick it in my pocket shall I?

Survival skills relating to this become key to avoiding the wind ups, and you do pick them up soon enough. For one you learn to pick out the packaging related questions amidst all the queries thrown in your face at any check out, and you learn to answer them negatively, or even better to figure out the right gesture that mean ‘thanks but I’ll do without all the plastic’. And then you learn where the rubbish bins are, so that you can avoid carrying plastic around with you. Or if that fails you get a bike with a basket cum rubbish bin.

It’s definitely one of the more inconsequential aspects of living in Japan, and one that is unlikely to really make your life a misery, unless you’re some kind of freak or a miserable git like I can be sometimes. But it does boggle the mind, like a lot of things here. Especially considering the amount of recycling people partake in. Remember kids, just say no.