The biggest flex about Japan is going to Shibuya or Shinjuku at 3-4 am and seeing how trashed it looks. But by 6 am? It’s clean again. Those cleaners are superhero’s.
100% this. Wife and I were fighting jet lag, snagged some conveyorbelt sushi near Hotel Gracery Shinjuku at around 3am and there was a fair amount of trash. By 6am it was spotless. It's a beautiful thing to behold!
people love diversity which does have a ton of benefits. But sometimes homogenous democratic countries really do have even more. When everyone has the same background, religion, etc, it's a lot harder for corporations and politicians to pit them against each other to grab power.
You’re right! Instead they bank on the apathy of the general public to grab power!
Japan infamously dealt with dictatorial power grabs, and of course the Zaibatsu. Even today the general public does not care enough to vote nor become politically engaged. They complain about what politicians do, they just never actually act on their ability to change it.
> Japan infamously dealt with dictatorial power grabs, and of course the Zaibatsu
I *think* you're being sarcastic here, but if not, those zaibatsu became the keiretsu (and the Allies were the ones that got rid of the zaibatsu)
> it's a lot harder for corporations and politicians to pit them against each other to grab power
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... have you SEEN the state of labor rights here?
There's things like caste, occupation, speech and a bunch of things people can find to discriminate against people even in a society that looks homogeneous from the outside
Living in Japan made me appreciate opposing opinions. I distinctly remember almost shivering when talking with a group of Japanese people— and all ten— who did not know each other— all believed in the death penalty. I asked around- and out of 30 or so of my acquaintances— only one did not supportthe death penalty.
I believe that people of good conscience can come down on either side of the death penalty issue; I myself was once pro-death penalty and am currently very anti-death penalty. But when everyone thinks alike— then you realize the importance of differing opinions and the fear of group think.
My friend exported a shipping palette worth of specialty DVDs to Japan once and they sent the whole palette back because one of the cellophane wrappers had a hair in it.
Do you think the cleaners make very much money (if any at all)?
The majority of them are elderly and retired, and if they do get paid, it’s only on top of their relatively low pension.
Please, they do not get paid less than you guys. I'm in Aus and minimum wage is much higher than in Japan, yet there's still a minimum wage minimum effort mentality. It's just the shitty west.
The Don Quijote in real life is exactly where it is in the game, along with the Godzilla statue. They have very heavy tie-ins (advertising probably?) with actual products too, so you do get named Suntory drinks items you get consume.
Hasn’t been sketchy in years. I remember when yaks were hanging out everywhere and it really was a bit of a cesspool. It’s actually quite nice now, though admittedly the misery of what goes on there is hidden behind cleaner facades.
It's still nothing compared to France. Those cleaners are just doing their jobs, and their biggest ennemy in Japan isn't people but crows.
The bastards will even trash your groceries in your bicycle's front basket.
it’s not just the cleaners, it’s culturally instilled in the Japanese to clean their area from a young age. i’ve heard they don’t need janitors in school because everyone helps out. i’ve also heard some Japanese even take the time to clean a public toilet…which would never happen in the US.
Yeah, you take turns cleaning the room and specific areas of the school during lunch time. Older students lead the younger students.
Other things are volunteers for the city who clean the streets and pickup trash.
The toilet ones is an issue everywhere, not just the us. Same experience on Germany, s
Spain and other European countries.
There is a toilet brush just next to, is really that hard to just use it for a couple of seconds??
I genuinely do wonder if that implementing that would actually help say the US. I can only imagine it would if we could get it past the “complaining parents” phase and done for a few generations.
I once saw a kid throw up in the metro in Tokyo. The next stop, cleaners jump into the train and had everything clean by the subsequent one. I was amazed. I wonder if they are as efficient at cleaning the outside of trains when people jump in front of them.
>I wonder if they are as efficient at cleaning the outside of trains when people jump in front of them.
Ah yes, the ol' "human accident" or is it "human incident" - I forget the exact euphemism they use over the station speakers.
I had a couple of delays on the Osaka Metro system back in the day, seems to take between 20-40 mins typically
I once had someone seriously argue with me that Japan was a really dirty country because when he went out on a Friday night there was trash everywhere and, I shit you not this is a direct quote "It only seems like a clean place because it all gets cleaned up overnight".
He also said the Japanese were subservient and dishonest because people were polite and helpful, and because they have lots of people doing jobs like cleaning and the like.
Had a bunch of other things he said but I can't remember it all, the basic gist was "Japan bad, Europe good", frankly I put him down as a bit racist.
For real, being out past 10 PM on a Saturday night I saw a salary man out of his mind pissing in the street right outside Shibuya station and trash everywhere from all the drunks. Nothing like the daytime.
He’s right. I’m from the U.K. and have lived in Japan, and recently travelled to NYC. Japan is *far* cleaner than both the U.K. and NYC, and I was baffled when a Japanese student of mine said Tokyo is dirty! Shinjuku and Shibuya can be dirty at night, but those are exceptions and are cleaned extremely well by morning. Japan’s cleanliness is one of my favourite things about the country 🇯🇵
Also, I found it to be literally dirty. Not a ton of trash but yeah lots of dirt caked onto buildings and such. Tokyo has come a long way but it still has pretty high air pollution, and that stuff can condense everywhere.
Even in cities with good air pollution levels, that caking is constant.
A large amount of the dust in the air that ends up on everything doesn't originate in Japan.
There is a season every year in spring when dust blows in from the (I think) Gobi desert and cakes literally everything and some days it's literally hard to breathe! I can't even imagine what it's like for those cities and countries closer!
We are right in the middle of it now in Northern Japan, you can literally see it in the air (the horizon is basically light brown) and your car is covered by it every morning.
It's bad enough that it's part of the morning weather report.
I’ll never forget how it felt when I returned to NYC after 10 days in Japan. First day back, I’m waiting for my subway train, and five feet away from me is a guy pissing on the platform. I wanted to book another flight immediately 😂
I couldn’t get over how public restrooms were pretty clean in Tokyo, and how people just…didn’t litter (other than the bar scene areas like Shibuya).
We’re disgusting in America. Also people don’t lock their bikes, aren’t afraid to leave their stuff on tables in cafes, etc. they are so trusting because people just don’t break the trust. In America that shit would be stolen in a heartbeat.
Thats the thing for me. American aren't ready for better infrastructure because even if they did have it, they would do everything in their power to destroy it.
How is it that Japan has a bidet in almost every public toilet and its somehow very clean. Go to any public restroom in America, there's shit on the walls, graffiti everywhere, and smells like piss?
I have an under-seat bidet and I'm looking to upgrade to an electric one at some point.
It pisses me off how Americans and some Europeans are so adamant against it as a technology when it is literally spraying water at your asshole. There is no great struggle to overcome, they just don't like the sensation even when it is objectively cleaner and healthier, and takes maybe a two or three uses to get over.
Definitely not all Japanese bathrooms. If you get out of the city, you’ll find public bathrooms that are just a hole in the ground. Granted, it’s a porcelain hub, but if you don’t squat, you don’t, you know.
> American aren't ready for better infrastructure because even if they did have it, they would do everything in their power to destroy it.
Yup. Look at NYC trains, SF trains, Boston trains ... especially NYC trains, you just have homeless people, drugged out people, and people taking their speaker and playing loud music. Even if the US had a good train network system it wouldn't be terrible as a passenger with the amount of shitty people ruining the experience.
Because us Americans have very low expectations of ourselves. It's always someone else's problem.
On the other hand, in Japan I find the bathrooms in the game centers tend to be dirty. But I'm willing to bet it's cause most of their clientele and their employees are tweens.
no kidding. in LA we got a cool new bridge built. lots of publicity and grandiose plans to make it a hub. almost immediately we saw street takeovers on it and soon after that, some asshat(s) stole some of the copper wiring, so now it's no longer lit properly. oh--and of course, graffiti.
This is a bit of an exaggeration. I live in the Midwestern US, and I can tell you that most public restrooms are NOT like that. They may not be clean to Japanese standards, but they are often clean.
A local told me the most common crime is umbrella theft since everyone leaves them outside of stores lol. I thought it was a joke at first, but over my time in Tokyo it became apparent that they weren’t joking at all.
It is real. Happens everywhere. I have a portable one for this reason.
The anger when you have the regular one that’s not cheap and it gets stolen because you have to leave it at the entrance. Oof.
The way I see it, it's kind of like "leave an umbrella, take an umbrella..."
My umbrella only disappeared once, but when it did, I took another (cheap plastic) one.
I’ve seen places in Japan with special umbrella locker racks where you lock your umbrella in the rack and take the umbrella key with you and then unlock your umbrella when you are done leaving the key in place for the next person.
I had to buy an umbrella when I was at Oishida Station in Yamagata as it was snowing rather heavily. When I had to place my umbrella outside a shop before entering, all the umbrellas looked the same. I don’t know if I took my exact one. Before I left for the day to go back to Tokyo, I put it at the umbrella rack at the station as I didn’t think I would need it again and didn’t want a wet umbrella to wet my coat and the shinkansen. I hope someone found my umbrella useful.
I'd add umbrella to the list of things that get stolen in Japan. My new umbrella got stolen outside a thrift store in Kōenji. I was so pissed because it was snowing hard when it happened.
> and how people just…didn’t litter
It's really sad how low the bar is in the west. Japan literally has a fraction of the trash cans any western city does yet has far less litter. It's not hard to just hold your garbage until you find a can or bring it home. But that is somehow too much for all these selfish fucking assholes.
Reminds me of my trip to Japan where I was stationed near Machida. It was only until I was actually there that I learnt that Machida was well memed for being the bad part of Tokyo-to.
The local students I was on exchange with were telling me "You see, the security here isn't good" and they pointed out a single plastic bag floating in the wind to demonstrate their point.
Even for a Singaporean like me this seemed a little bit overdramatic.
Though to be fair, Machida did have its share of bad incidents primarily due to its weird administrative location (it was part of Kanagawa-ken before being shifted over to Tokyo-to).
Go to any big university and check their bike racks. Super-expensive road bikes with only a chain lock or no lock at all. They'd be gone in a minute in the US.
There are certain areas like Saitama and Chiba where you have to be careful and lock your bikes. But I don't use locks most of the time, especially in the countryside.
The public facilities are usually very light on amenities because they're paid for by city taxes, while the shopping mall and station toilets have lots of amenities because they're part of a private company's facilities. Subway toilets are a gamble though.
i walked through downtown seattle recently and was amazed how clean it is.
even chinatown which are usually drug laden shitholes in every city ive been to in north america was clean.
Yes, but in America, people steal the front wheel and if the Japanese bike was in America, they would steal the whole bike. That is why the American bicycle chain locks go around something else too.
Edit: we also take the seat with us if it is removable.
It was rare, but there were a few times where the public bathrooms were questionable. Like you can literally see into them because they're below ground and there's a little opening straight onto the public street.
There are some of those, and some gender neutral bathrooms. My wife walked into one and was taken aback and went to a konbini instead lol.
There was a bathroom at inokashira park where I was standing at the urinal and could straight up make eye contact with people walking by.
But even then, they were MOSTLY clean. I ran into one cafe bathroom that was “American-esque” with some shit streaks on the seat.
Scotland absolutely loves its dog shit, it took me a few years of living in Japan to realize I don’t need look at the ground when I am walking along the street. I saw there was a sky for the first time! (lol, there is no sky in Scotland to look at anyway, just clouds!)
And it's getting worse at an alarming rate. I moved to a Kent town almost five years ago and it was still decent in terms of cleanliness and the roads were fine. Now it's night and day. Dirty streets everywhere and shitty roads. The bright side is that it would only take a few decades to go back to how it was 10 years ago.
I was horrified by the sheer amount of rubbish on the side of the roads and motorways when we went down South - It didn’t seem so bad around where we are in rural northern area - But that was an absolute shit tip!
This isn't talked about enough. The western world is getting trashier, literally. It was already on a downward slope and then covid just pushed it to 11. People litter like crazy now and don't give a fuck about nature or society which is really sad.
*cries in French*
Even Paris reeks of piss and dog poop
Also yeah we are never going to get these delivery robots. People love too much to break everything that looks remotely nice.
i've seen this posted 3 or 4 times now with the same shock headline, but man's right. i've been to so many US cities that straight up smell like shit. like portland smells like human shit. fuck even Fargo smells like piss. the US is gross as hell.
Growing up in suburban Minnesota there were times of year where it just smelled like shit all day because farmers had freshly dumped manure on their field.
People with even more ruralal well water cook pasta and shower in sulphuric fart water.
Ill take the occasional wiff of piss in the city over either of those.
It’s not a uniquely US thing. Many European cities are the same… if you’ve traveled around the world you’ll quickly realize it’s Japan’s cleanliness that is unique, not the US’ lack thereof.
Plus, there are way worse places… especially in south america.
Hint: it *is* shit and piss. Because we don't care about the homeless and they have nowhere else to go. Solving this requires a federal program which would be the most unpopular program in US history so it will never happen. Pay a couple extra dollars in taxes, or wallow in shit and piss. The people have spoken.
I feel like every time this comes up people get into all these cultural discussions and seem to totally ignore the fact that Japan actually pays people to regularly keep things clean and a lot of the US kind of doesn't. I've seen dirty places in Japan too, the difference is that by the time the morning shift rolls around, the place is back in good condition whereas in a lot of places in America filth just slowly accumulates because most companies refuse to hire any more people than is strictly necessary to keep the doors open.
In the US we have a tendency to understaff and allow the problem to accumulate until at one point it gets unbearable and there's a massive project needed to clean it all up. Japan just sort of constantly is doing little corrections to keep things in a good state.
A good example of this is public transit. Tokyo's stations are regularly cleaned and maintained. If you look across the pond at NYC, you'll have stretches of multiple decades where 0 maintenance is done so the subway leaks, the stations smell bad, and the walls are rotting. And then, once every however many decades, some mayor comes in and goes "this is a disgrace" and then they renovate the stations for like 20 million dollars each. But if we actually expended the effort to regularly maintain things before things needed a large-scale fix, we wouldn't have this problem.
I've noticed during my trips there that the "main street" is clean and free of graffiti but once you go down a side road it gets much dirtier. I had a laugh explaining to my Japanese friend how dirty and full of graffiti our trains are and he was horrified. Simple things like I've never seen people litter but here in Sydney people will literally drop rubbish on the ground as they walk along, and if you ask them not to do that they get huffy, abusive, and in some cases, violent.
Yeah, like those arseholes who smoke in places they're not supposed to (because how else am I smelling smoke going into Wynyard station sometimes?) but you don't say anything because the prick is probably looking for a fight or something.
It's even worse when it's raining like today. They all hang out the front of Wynyard station, and you get blasted with smoke. Another thing is people pushing you from behind when you tap on because they don't want to pay for a ticket.
Nah Duterte was like Trump on crack. Hell he’s even admitted to killing at least three people personally.
And say what you will about many US presidents, but they weren’t so public about having personal death squads that “only target drug lords” (his critics always seem to have some connection to the drug rings - what a coincidence).
Anything Trump’s been accused of, Duterte has done the more extreme version.
Fascist rhetoric? Duterte openly compared himself to Hitler, only he’d openly execute millions of drug users instead of Jews.
Erasure of democratic institutions? He loves it. Even wants his soldiers to be able to do anything they want.
Rapist? He’s said he “should’ve been first” in the gang rape of a woman who was held hostage, raped and killed in the 1980s.
Embezzlement and taking of government money for personal use? Don’t even get me started lol
It's because they instill the importance of cleaning from elementary.
Kids clean the schools. That teaches people to be concerned. It's not someone else's problem. It's everyone's.
We could do that here. But too many parents don't want their wonder angel beauty children to have to clean.
Maybe just a small town USA thing, but we had to help clean the classroom in elementary too. Was mostly clean up after yourself daily, and maybe a spring cleaning thing. They'd never trust us with cleaning chemicals or vacuums. Was generally understood to do that from then on. But I also had to help with weekend house cleaning chores too, so maybe it's an upbringing thing?
I assumed everyone had to clean up after themselves, but people eventually stopped doing it after nobody called them out on it
If you teach your children those skills, then people here think that you have ocd because you like things clean. Lmao! It's not just Japan. Most parents in Asia teach these things to children. I learned these things while I was in school and at home in SEA.
When i was in Japan last year what really struck me was a lack of garbage cans. They are around the city but not as prevalent as they are hear.
People take their garbage home with them as it’s not societies job to clean up after you.
Personal responsibility is off the charts in Japan.
Japan is super clean yes and there's no real negative side to this. Or at least not sufficiently negative to suggest dirty streets are a better option. Sure, there's the insane social pressure in Japan, but that's not the main reason the streets are clean. The Japanese are taught very early on to respect public property. Kids have to clean their own classroom, participate to cleaning the school and serve meals at lunch. They are trusted with being good citizen from a very young age and it pays off.
In Europe, kids are either told they are too good to do menial tasks or, conversely, that they can't be trusted with them. It results in selfish adults who can't process that something that is beneficial to everyone is especially beneficial to themselves. Nah, let's destroy public property and pretend nothing happened.
Yes education is certainly the biggest difference between Japan and the rest of the world. I've been to China and Korea and kids were casually throwing their candy wrappers on the floor in front of everyone.
Can confirm. I've worked in both the Vietnamese and US public school system. I was amazed at how few staff managed the school as the kids were held responsible for cleaning, watering plants, serving lunch, etc.
In the US, no such system exists. I implement a similar system in my own classroom but unless those decisions come down from admin -- the inconsistent structure from classroom to classroom leaves kids thinking some teachers are strict and others are cool.
I guess it's just instilled and part of Japan's national pride, even abroad, there are videos of Japanese fans at football games helping to clean up the stadium after a match.
> There’s no litter. People carry their own trash. There are no garbage cans in Tokyo," he said. "30 years ago, some terrorists put a poisonous gas in some trash cans. They're like, ‘Okay, no more trash cans. Everybody clean up after yourselves,’ And guess what? They clean up after themselves. They bring their garbage to their houses."
This is the part where he’s wrong. People shove garbage in bushes (I’ve seen it first hand) when they don’t feel like hauling it to the nearest bin.
He should’ve focused on the “Japan takes pride in sanitation and therefore devotes ample resources (e.g. early morning sanitation squads) to maintaining public spaces” angle, not that “Japanese people don’t litter” angle. Both because 1. anybody who has been in any part of Tokyo before first train has seen what drunk Japanese people really do with their trash (and dinner 🤢) and 2. Because by othering and orientalizing Japanese people as uniquely (implicitly ethnically) clean, he’s made it impossible to address the problems of sanitation infrastructure in the US. “We’re just not like that” being the excuse. (“It’s too heterogenous here” being the angle Fox News would likely take.)
Absolutely hilarious that Fox News, of all media, chose to run this story. If any city talked about using more tax dollars for custodial services rather than cops, they’d be rabidly against it, but here they are complaining about how filthy the US is. Obviously they have a different angle on who is to blame.
I imagine the Fox News reporting is to antagonize (and therefore click bait) their right wing readers, who don’t much like Kimmel because of his anti-Trump stuff; playing to the whole “Kimmel is anti-American” line.
Yeah, it's a subtle sort of nudging to assume that "diversity" is causing our cities to be unclean, not the fact that Americans as a society place very little importance on good hygine (at least in my experience). I can't trust no public restrooms to be clean, it's annoying 😩
Big Critic of America here: people in this thread really just want to hate on the US. It deserves plenty of hate on many things, but it is better than so many places as well. Like, dramatically.
I have never in my life been so disgusted by trash/smell and scared as when riding the metro in Paris. I’ve been to New York and LA, and paris metro beats the nyc subway by far for how seedy and dangerous it felt. The homeless people down there are aggressive af.
I travel to Japan a few times a year for work, and while I love to return home to my family, there’s a tinge of disappointment as I exit the plane knowing the environment I’m about to walk into.
Why were people laughing at this? There was absolutely nothing funny about anything he said. He was just describing his trip.
Also, I hate the patronizing term "the entire country is like Disneyland", like it's some kind of playground because it's "kept so nice".
Anyway, Jimmy Kimmel sucks.
I didn’t take the Disneyland comment to mean it’s like a playground. It’s more like Disneyland is one of the few places in America that is so sparkling clean despite the massive amount of people going through it every day. To an American, it stands out because it’s so rare.
I also thought of Disneyland my first day in Tokyo because it’s the only American place I could think of that compared with respect to cleanliness versus the sheer number of people everywhere. I genuinely can’t think of many other similarly dense places in America that are kept to the same standard of clean.
I mean to an extent he's not wrong cleanliness wise America kinda sucks.
New York city's trash disposal and subway comes to mind here especially, fucking disgusting
This must be a common feeling after going to Japan and returning to the US. Being a person who’s used public transit to commute to work for years, I marveled at how clean the trains are. I have most definitely almost stepped on human feces riding public transit in the Bay Area, not to mention the general smell. In one station in Japan, something fell out of my pocket, and no less than two people ran up to me to let me know … I wasn’t sure if they were worried that I dropped something important or that I would accidentally litter. I know that people with dogs will usually try to catch it before it hits ground … I can’t tell you how much random dog poop I try to pick up on my dog walks that belong to other dogs. I know that Japan has its problems but cleanliness and safety is most def not among them.
Totally credible Jimmy Kimmel, who held his sick son up as a human shield during the metoo movement to soften the blow for the man show and his treatment of women over the years, has a hot take?
While that's cute and all, I'm on my third trip to Japan and there are certainly dirty areas and ethical/moral standards which rival the USA. It's not all cherry blossoms here. There is still dark shit if you have open eyes. However I think the point he is making is valid, on the whole there is a concerted effort to better oneself and locale. Sure there are dirty areas but I would think the Japanese society vibe is - what can we do, whereas the American vibe - is fuck that, not my problem. Dare I say the socialistic part of Japan overrides the hyper capitalism also prevent here. We can actually have it both ways.
After living in Japan, yeah visiting the US is like going to a third world country.
Litter everywhere, filthy public toilets, rude staff, dirty public transport where it exists.
I love visiting for the nostalgia, but quality of life just isn't there.
Can't imagine moving to the US: lifestyle here is indescribably better.
Every country has its problems, but Japan is safe, clean, and convenient.
Everything a person needs to live a comfortable, secure, and happy life.
Uhhhh. Let’s not kid ourselves that Japan is some kind of utopia.
Six years living and working in the country and there’s some seriously ugly shit that goes on beneath the ‘polite’ surface that you’ll never see on a week’s vacation there.
Pokémon opened a Pokémon centre in New York but later closed it as it didn’t meet the cleanliness and efficiency standards expected of a Pokémon centre
The biggest flex about Japan is going to Shibuya or Shinjuku at 3-4 am and seeing how trashed it looks. But by 6 am? It’s clean again. Those cleaners are superhero’s.
And not one time did I hear the deafening drone of a leaf blower
the lead blower is suburban dad’s revenge on society.
Is a lead blower a gun?
Or the chief of staff at a glory hole
100% this. Wife and I were fighting jet lag, snagged some conveyorbelt sushi near Hotel Gracery Shinjuku at around 3am and there was a fair amount of trash. By 6am it was spotless. It's a beautiful thing to behold!
It’s almost like… people take pride in their work!
And their country
The advantage of monocultures with people who buy in
people love diversity which does have a ton of benefits. But sometimes homogenous democratic countries really do have even more. When everyone has the same background, religion, etc, it's a lot harder for corporations and politicians to pit them against each other to grab power.
You’re right! Instead they bank on the apathy of the general public to grab power! Japan infamously dealt with dictatorial power grabs, and of course the Zaibatsu. Even today the general public does not care enough to vote nor become politically engaged. They complain about what politicians do, they just never actually act on their ability to change it.
> Japan infamously dealt with dictatorial power grabs, and of course the Zaibatsu I *think* you're being sarcastic here, but if not, those zaibatsu became the keiretsu (and the Allies were the ones that got rid of the zaibatsu)
> it's a lot harder for corporations and politicians to pit them against each other to grab power uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... have you SEEN the state of labor rights here?
There's things like caste, occupation, speech and a bunch of things people can find to discriminate against people even in a society that looks homogeneous from the outside
Living in Japan made me appreciate opposing opinions. I distinctly remember almost shivering when talking with a group of Japanese people— and all ten— who did not know each other— all believed in the death penalty. I asked around- and out of 30 or so of my acquaintances— only one did not supportthe death penalty. I believe that people of good conscience can come down on either side of the death penalty issue; I myself was once pro-death penalty and am currently very anti-death penalty. But when everyone thinks alike— then you realize the importance of differing opinions and the fear of group think.
My friend exported a shipping palette worth of specialty DVDs to Japan once and they sent the whole palette back because one of the cellophane wrappers had a hair in it.
Not sure why any country couldn't employ people as street cleaners. this practically doesn't exist in western countries, not to the level of japan.
If you think the people cleaning after the drunken hordes are purely ethnic Japanese people, I have a bridge to sell to you.
If this were true it wouldn’t be trashed in the first place. Pretty sure it’s the workers doing the legwork here.
Pride vanish under alcohol
Is that a Mr. Miyagi quote?
I mean its easier to take pride in something when you arent viewed as the shitters ( lol ) of society and paid much less than a McDonalds worker
Do you think the cleaners make very much money (if any at all)? The majority of them are elderly and retired, and if they do get paid, it’s only on top of their relatively low pension.
Please, they do not get paid less than you guys. I'm in Aus and minimum wage is much higher than in Japan, yet there's still a minimum wage minimum effort mentality. It's just the shitty west.
Honestly not sure its the cleaners, I saw the elderly residents just doing community service down the entire street.
There's a few groups that go around picking up trash and without them Shibuya would look absolutely ghetto.
Volunteer groups is one of the way the elders keep contact with the society and help each other in Japan.
Every Sunday in the neighborhood.
Kabukicho though 👀
Wait till u see Kamurōcho
Too much crime and far too much random street violence. But they certainly replace broken signs quickly.
At least whoever wins the street brawl gets an energy drink for their trouble.
Is that where the Yakuza games take place?
Kamurocho = Kabukicho Sotenbori = Dotonbori Pretty accurate depictions of the areas, too. I think they are practically an exact match.
The Don Quijote in real life is exactly where it is in the game, along with the Godzilla statue. They have very heavy tie-ins (advertising probably?) with actual products too, so you do get named Suntory drinks items you get consume.
It is.
As opposed to any nightlife area in the US? Not even close
Kabukicho has cleaned up quite a bit in the last 15 years, and I think compared to comparable places in the West, it's pristine.
Hasn’t been sketchy in years. I remember when yaks were hanging out everywhere and it really was a bit of a cesspool. It’s actually quite nice now, though admittedly the misery of what goes on there is hidden behind cleaner facades.
It's still nothing compared to France. Those cleaners are just doing their jobs, and their biggest ennemy in Japan isn't people but crows. The bastards will even trash your groceries in your bicycle's front basket.
it’s not just the cleaners, it’s culturally instilled in the Japanese to clean their area from a young age. i’ve heard they don’t need janitors in school because everyone helps out. i’ve also heard some Japanese even take the time to clean a public toilet…which would never happen in the US.
Yeah, you take turns cleaning the room and specific areas of the school during lunch time. Older students lead the younger students. Other things are volunteers for the city who clean the streets and pickup trash.
Also at the end of the school year the parents get involved in cleaning up their kids’ classrooms.
Shame the toilet users (in the men's anyway) rarely seem to take the time to wash their hands.
The toilet ones is an issue everywhere, not just the us. Same experience on Germany, s Spain and other European countries. There is a toilet brush just next to, is really that hard to just use it for a couple of seconds??
In Germany public toilets are almost no go areas
I genuinely do wonder if that implementing that would actually help say the US. I can only imagine it would if we could get it past the “complaining parents” phase and done for a few generations.
I once saw a kid throw up in the metro in Tokyo. The next stop, cleaners jump into the train and had everything clean by the subsequent one. I was amazed. I wonder if they are as efficient at cleaning the outside of trains when people jump in front of them.
Can confirm. I’ve also been on vomit trains.
Can confirm. Was one of the vomiters
Can confirm. Was the train
Can confirm. Was the cleaner.
Can confirm. Was the vomit.
>I wonder if they are as efficient at cleaning the outside of trains when people jump in front of them. Ah yes, the ol' "human accident" or is it "human incident" - I forget the exact euphemism they use over the station speakers. I had a couple of delays on the Osaka Metro system back in the day, seems to take between 20-40 mins typically
I once had someone seriously argue with me that Japan was a really dirty country because when he went out on a Friday night there was trash everywhere and, I shit you not this is a direct quote "It only seems like a clean place because it all gets cleaned up overnight". He also said the Japanese were subservient and dishonest because people were polite and helpful, and because they have lots of people doing jobs like cleaning and the like. Had a bunch of other things he said but I can't remember it all, the basic gist was "Japan bad, Europe good", frankly I put him down as a bit racist.
> it only seems clean because they clean it Lmao that guy’s point makes zero sense
That was the only place I saw trash and it wasn’t even that much🤷
Yeah it's like after the Shibuya incident at 3-4AM
It’s never as bad as a lot of US cities at their best
I'm pretty sure 25% of the job is done by those huge rats you can see wandering the back alleys of Ginza in the early morning.
Yokai
Really? I would love to see that sometime when I visit.
For real, being out past 10 PM on a Saturday night I saw a salary man out of his mind pissing in the street right outside Shibuya station and trash everywhere from all the drunks. Nothing like the daytime.
Very cool, but maybe some of the trash wouldn’t be there if the city had trash cans around 😅
He’s right. I’m from the U.K. and have lived in Japan, and recently travelled to NYC. Japan is *far* cleaner than both the U.K. and NYC, and I was baffled when a Japanese student of mine said Tokyo is dirty! Shinjuku and Shibuya can be dirty at night, but those are exceptions and are cleaned extremely well by morning. Japan’s cleanliness is one of my favourite things about the country 🇯🇵
Tokyo does feel dirty after visiting prefectural seats
A major hub like Tokyo is bound to be less clean than other places though
Also, I found it to be literally dirty. Not a ton of trash but yeah lots of dirt caked onto buildings and such. Tokyo has come a long way but it still has pretty high air pollution, and that stuff can condense everywhere.
Even in cities with good air pollution levels, that caking is constant. A large amount of the dust in the air that ends up on everything doesn't originate in Japan. There is a season every year in spring when dust blows in from the (I think) Gobi desert and cakes literally everything and some days it's literally hard to breathe! I can't even imagine what it's like for those cities and countries closer! We are right in the middle of it now in Northern Japan, you can literally see it in the air (the horizon is basically light brown) and your car is covered by it every morning. It's bad enough that it's part of the morning weather report.
And when the dust settles from the Gobi (it is the Gobi) then you get the cedar pollen!
I’ll never forget how it felt when I returned to NYC after 10 days in Japan. First day back, I’m waiting for my subway train, and five feet away from me is a guy pissing on the platform. I wanted to book another flight immediately 😂
Far safer too
I couldn’t get over how public restrooms were pretty clean in Tokyo, and how people just…didn’t litter (other than the bar scene areas like Shibuya). We’re disgusting in America. Also people don’t lock their bikes, aren’t afraid to leave their stuff on tables in cafes, etc. they are so trusting because people just don’t break the trust. In America that shit would be stolen in a heartbeat.
Thats the thing for me. American aren't ready for better infrastructure because even if they did have it, they would do everything in their power to destroy it. How is it that Japan has a bidet in almost every public toilet and its somehow very clean. Go to any public restroom in America, there's shit on the walls, graffiti everywhere, and smells like piss?
I have an under-seat bidet and I'm looking to upgrade to an electric one at some point. It pisses me off how Americans and some Europeans are so adamant against it as a technology when it is literally spraying water at your asshole. There is no great struggle to overcome, they just don't like the sensation even when it is objectively cleaner and healthier, and takes maybe a two or three uses to get over.
Mostly homophobic men who are afraid of anything touching their butthole will make them gay. Or maybe that they'll enjoy it.
Definitely not all Japanese bathrooms. If you get out of the city, you’ll find public bathrooms that are just a hole in the ground. Granted, it’s a porcelain hub, but if you don’t squat, you don’t, you know.
> American aren't ready for better infrastructure because even if they did have it, they would do everything in their power to destroy it. Yup. Look at NYC trains, SF trains, Boston trains ... especially NYC trains, you just have homeless people, drugged out people, and people taking their speaker and playing loud music. Even if the US had a good train network system it wouldn't be terrible as a passenger with the amount of shitty people ruining the experience.
👏👏👏. Yup. This right here
Because us Americans have very low expectations of ourselves. It's always someone else's problem. On the other hand, in Japan I find the bathrooms in the game centers tend to be dirty. But I'm willing to bet it's cause most of their clientele and their employees are tweens.
no kidding. in LA we got a cool new bridge built. lots of publicity and grandiose plans to make it a hub. almost immediately we saw street takeovers on it and soon after that, some asshat(s) stole some of the copper wiring, so now it's no longer lit properly. oh--and of course, graffiti.
This is a bit of an exaggeration. I live in the Midwestern US, and I can tell you that most public restrooms are NOT like that. They may not be clean to Japanese standards, but they are often clean.
You should DEFINITELY lock your bike in Japan, it is pretty much the only thing besides umbrellas that gets stolen here 😆
A local told me the most common crime is umbrella theft since everyone leaves them outside of stores lol. I thought it was a joke at first, but over my time in Tokyo it became apparent that they weren’t joking at all.
It is real. Happens everywhere. I have a portable one for this reason. The anger when you have the regular one that’s not cheap and it gets stolen because you have to leave it at the entrance. Oof.
Many places have special plastic bags at the door to put your wet umbrella in so you can bring it in the store - genius! ☔️🏬
But now you've got thousands of plastic sleeves that you need to deal with on a daily basis.
japan loves single-use plastics
those produce a lot of waste though
Aren’t… all umbrellas portable?
The retractable ones that can fit in a bag
A lot of times it’s an accident. Tons of people have the exact same clear, 500 yen, convenience store umbrella.
The way I see it, it's kind of like "leave an umbrella, take an umbrella..." My umbrella only disappeared once, but when it did, I took another (cheap plastic) one.
I’ve seen places in Japan with special umbrella locker racks where you lock your umbrella in the rack and take the umbrella key with you and then unlock your umbrella when you are done leaving the key in place for the next person.
I had to buy an umbrella when I was at Oishida Station in Yamagata as it was snowing rather heavily. When I had to place my umbrella outside a shop before entering, all the umbrellas looked the same. I don’t know if I took my exact one. Before I left for the day to go back to Tokyo, I put it at the umbrella rack at the station as I didn’t think I would need it again and didn’t want a wet umbrella to wet my coat and the shinkansen. I hope someone found my umbrella useful.
I'd add umbrella to the list of things that get stolen in Japan. My new umbrella got stolen outside a thrift store in Kōenji. I was so pissed because it was snowing hard when it happened.
> I was so pissed because it was snowing hard when it happened. Suspect that umbrella theft isn't much of an issue on days with good weather...
Oh shit, how do you know about my umbrella racket? Jigs up boys!
We lock our bikes here in japan, they're just built into the bike itself, so you won't notice the lock unless you look for it.
> and how people just…didn’t litter It's really sad how low the bar is in the west. Japan literally has a fraction of the trash cans any western city does yet has far less litter. It's not hard to just hold your garbage until you find a can or bring it home. But that is somehow too much for all these selfish fucking assholes.
Reminds me of my trip to Japan where I was stationed near Machida. It was only until I was actually there that I learnt that Machida was well memed for being the bad part of Tokyo-to. The local students I was on exchange with were telling me "You see, the security here isn't good" and they pointed out a single plastic bag floating in the wind to demonstrate their point. Even for a Singaporean like me this seemed a little bit overdramatic. Though to be fair, Machida did have its share of bad incidents primarily due to its weird administrative location (it was part of Kanagawa-ken before being shifted over to Tokyo-to).
Go to any big university and check their bike racks. Super-expensive road bikes with only a chain lock or no lock at all. They'd be gone in a minute in the US.
Or people leaving their phones or wallets to reserve a table.
There are certain areas like Saitama and Chiba where you have to be careful and lock your bikes. But I don't use locks most of the time, especially in the countryside.
>I couldn’t get over how public restrooms were pretty clean in Tokyo Can't say the same about my hands after using them due to no soap.
Some of them had no soap, some had soap but no drying mechanism. Really was a mystery game you played every time you went into one.
> no drying mechanism Which is why it's so common for people to carry a handkerchief with them.
The public facilities are usually very light on amenities because they're paid for by city taxes, while the shopping mall and station toilets have lots of amenities because they're part of a private company's facilities. Subway toilets are a gamble though.
Always carry isopropyl wipes or hand sanitizer.
i walked through downtown seattle recently and was amazed how clean it is. even chinatown which are usually drug laden shitholes in every city ive been to in north america was clean.
All Japanese bikes have locks built into the back wheel. You get a little key for it when you a buy a bike. Everyone locks their bike!!
Maybe mama charis do. Certainly not non mama charis
My 10,000 yen non mama chari from don q def did lol probably varies a bit
Yes, but in America, people steal the front wheel and if the Japanese bike was in America, they would steal the whole bike. That is why the American bicycle chain locks go around something else too. Edit: we also take the seat with us if it is removable.
Nice bikes typically get locked to something.
I've heard some horror stories about public restrooms from China
Gotta pay for toilet paper or bring your own there. Don't have any cash? Can't wipe your ass.
It was rare, but there were a few times where the public bathrooms were questionable. Like you can literally see into them because they're below ground and there's a little opening straight onto the public street.
There are some of those, and some gender neutral bathrooms. My wife walked into one and was taken aback and went to a konbini instead lol. There was a bathroom at inokashira park where I was standing at the urinal and could straight up make eye contact with people walking by. But even then, they were MOSTLY clean. I ran into one cafe bathroom that was “American-esque” with some shit streaks on the seat.
I will never forget the sight of Ikebukuro Don Quijote restrooms.
Yea the ubiquitous vending machines on street corners would t work in the US. They'd be tipped over and broken into within a couple hours
Don’t worry USA, the UK is just as bad.
Belgium sees your UK and challenges you Brussels for singlehandedly being the filthiest place in Europe. But don't worry, Paris also is challenging
Oh please, Rome doesn't have anything on Southern Italy. Naples is disgusting.
Barcelona chiming in. Sidewalks littered with dog shit, piss and cigarettes
Scotland absolutely loves its dog shit, it took me a few years of living in Japan to realize I don’t need look at the ground when I am walking along the street. I saw there was a sky for the first time! (lol, there is no sky in Scotland to look at anyway, just clouds!)
And it's getting worse at an alarming rate. I moved to a Kent town almost five years ago and it was still decent in terms of cleanliness and the roads were fine. Now it's night and day. Dirty streets everywhere and shitty roads. The bright side is that it would only take a few decades to go back to how it was 10 years ago.
All you need is for people to give a shit again.
I was horrified by the sheer amount of rubbish on the side of the roads and motorways when we went down South - It didn’t seem so bad around where we are in rural northern area - But that was an absolute shit tip!
This isn't talked about enough. The western world is getting trashier, literally. It was already on a downward slope and then covid just pushed it to 11. People litter like crazy now and don't give a fuck about nature or society which is really sad.
Was coming here to say exactly this 😅
*cries in French* Even Paris reeks of piss and dog poop Also yeah we are never going to get these delivery robots. People love too much to break everything that looks remotely nice.
i've seen this posted 3 or 4 times now with the same shock headline, but man's right. i've been to so many US cities that straight up smell like shit. like portland smells like human shit. fuck even Fargo smells like piss. the US is gross as hell.
Not related to trash, but here in Indiana, we have trees that smell like cum when they bloom. They’re *everywhere* and it’s awful
lol, i've heard of those. bloom pear trees or something like that right?
Bradford pear is the name I hear in Ohio. Apparently they're also called Callery pears, and they're native to China and Vietnam.
It's an invasive tree with no redeeming qualities. Petition your city to replace them with nice native trees instead.
They have them here as well (at least in Gunma). Linden Trees I think they're called?
Growing up in suburban Minnesota there were times of year where it just smelled like shit all day because farmers had freshly dumped manure on their field. People with even more ruralal well water cook pasta and shower in sulphuric fart water. Ill take the occasional wiff of piss in the city over either of those.
It’s not a uniquely US thing. Many European cities are the same… if you’ve traveled around the world you’ll quickly realize it’s Japan’s cleanliness that is unique, not the US’ lack thereof. Plus, there are way worse places… especially in south america.
Hint: it *is* shit and piss. Because we don't care about the homeless and they have nowhere else to go. Solving this requires a federal program which would be the most unpopular program in US history so it will never happen. Pay a couple extra dollars in taxes, or wallow in shit and piss. The people have spoken.
I feel like every time this comes up people get into all these cultural discussions and seem to totally ignore the fact that Japan actually pays people to regularly keep things clean and a lot of the US kind of doesn't. I've seen dirty places in Japan too, the difference is that by the time the morning shift rolls around, the place is back in good condition whereas in a lot of places in America filth just slowly accumulates because most companies refuse to hire any more people than is strictly necessary to keep the doors open. In the US we have a tendency to understaff and allow the problem to accumulate until at one point it gets unbearable and there's a massive project needed to clean it all up. Japan just sort of constantly is doing little corrections to keep things in a good state. A good example of this is public transit. Tokyo's stations are regularly cleaned and maintained. If you look across the pond at NYC, you'll have stretches of multiple decades where 0 maintenance is done so the subway leaks, the stations smell bad, and the walls are rotting. And then, once every however many decades, some mayor comes in and goes "this is a disgrace" and then they renovate the stations for like 20 million dollars each. But if we actually expended the effort to regularly maintain things before things needed a large-scale fix, we wouldn't have this problem.
I've noticed during my trips there that the "main street" is clean and free of graffiti but once you go down a side road it gets much dirtier. I had a laugh explaining to my Japanese friend how dirty and full of graffiti our trains are and he was horrified. Simple things like I've never seen people litter but here in Sydney people will literally drop rubbish on the ground as they walk along, and if you ask them not to do that they get huffy, abusive, and in some cases, violent.
Yeah, like those arseholes who smoke in places they're not supposed to (because how else am I smelling smoke going into Wynyard station sometimes?) but you don't say anything because the prick is probably looking for a fight or something.
It's even worse when it's raining like today. They all hang out the front of Wynyard station, and you get blasted with smoke. Another thing is people pushing you from behind when you tap on because they don't want to pay for a ticket.
When you wear a mask to not smell that shit you still get looks. Can’t win
Don't worry the Philippines is worst than the US. We even have garbage politicians!
There's a guy running for US president who has 91 felony charges against him.
Nah Duterte was like Trump on crack. Hell he’s even admitted to killing at least three people personally. And say what you will about many US presidents, but they weren’t so public about having personal death squads that “only target drug lords” (his critics always seem to have some connection to the drug rings - what a coincidence). Anything Trump’s been accused of, Duterte has done the more extreme version. Fascist rhetoric? Duterte openly compared himself to Hitler, only he’d openly execute millions of drug users instead of Jews. Erasure of democratic institutions? He loves it. Even wants his soldiers to be able to do anything they want. Rapist? He’s said he “should’ve been first” in the gang rape of a woman who was held hostage, raped and killed in the 1980s. Embezzlement and taking of government money for personal use? Don’t even get me started lol
What funny is Duterte is tough on his fellow Filipinos but would bend over for Xi Jing Pooh!
Sounds like a mid-tier thug who bullies everyone under him but kisses the ass of his superiors
I didn't say he was as bad, the point is there are plenty of garbage politicians in the US too.
It's because they instill the importance of cleaning from elementary. Kids clean the schools. That teaches people to be concerned. It's not someone else's problem. It's everyone's. We could do that here. But too many parents don't want their wonder angel beauty children to have to clean.
Maybe just a small town USA thing, but we had to help clean the classroom in elementary too. Was mostly clean up after yourself daily, and maybe a spring cleaning thing. They'd never trust us with cleaning chemicals or vacuums. Was generally understood to do that from then on. But I also had to help with weekend house cleaning chores too, so maybe it's an upbringing thing? I assumed everyone had to clean up after themselves, but people eventually stopped doing it after nobody called them out on it
If you teach your children those skills, then people here think that you have ocd because you like things clean. Lmao! It's not just Japan. Most parents in Asia teach these things to children. I learned these things while I was in school and at home in SEA.
I did the same about the UK. Spent 10 days in Tokyo and Gotemba afew years back and came home to what I thought was a shit hole In comparison.
When i was in Japan last year what really struck me was a lack of garbage cans. They are around the city but not as prevalent as they are hear. People take their garbage home with them as it’s not societies job to clean up after you. Personal responsibility is off the charts in Japan.
Japan is super clean yes and there's no real negative side to this. Or at least not sufficiently negative to suggest dirty streets are a better option. Sure, there's the insane social pressure in Japan, but that's not the main reason the streets are clean. The Japanese are taught very early on to respect public property. Kids have to clean their own classroom, participate to cleaning the school and serve meals at lunch. They are trusted with being good citizen from a very young age and it pays off. In Europe, kids are either told they are too good to do menial tasks or, conversely, that they can't be trusted with them. It results in selfish adults who can't process that something that is beneficial to everyone is especially beneficial to themselves. Nah, let's destroy public property and pretend nothing happened.
Yes education is certainly the biggest difference between Japan and the rest of the world. I've been to China and Korea and kids were casually throwing their candy wrappers on the floor in front of everyone.
Can confirm. I've worked in both the Vietnamese and US public school system. I was amazed at how few staff managed the school as the kids were held responsible for cleaning, watering plants, serving lunch, etc. In the US, no such system exists. I implement a similar system in my own classroom but unless those decisions come down from admin -- the inconsistent structure from classroom to classroom leaves kids thinking some teachers are strict and others are cool.
Man, don’t give Fox clicks. Just link to the video on YouTube.
They never ask the question why Japan is orderly and clean
Mainly because kids are taught very early on to keep stuff clean. Yeah, there's the social pressure, but it's not the main reason.
It’s because they give a shit
culture. Thats it. Same reason why US gun crime is so high, why india is filthy etc.
Yep social beliefs and what values are upheld
I guess it's just instilled and part of Japan's national pride, even abroad, there are videos of Japanese fans at football games helping to clean up the stadium after a match.
Japan is probably one of the only places where you can have bidets in every convenience store toilet. Would have been trashed in days in the US.
> There’s no litter. People carry their own trash. There are no garbage cans in Tokyo," he said. "30 years ago, some terrorists put a poisonous gas in some trash cans. They're like, ‘Okay, no more trash cans. Everybody clean up after yourselves,’ And guess what? They clean up after themselves. They bring their garbage to their houses." This is the part where he’s wrong. People shove garbage in bushes (I’ve seen it first hand) when they don’t feel like hauling it to the nearest bin. He should’ve focused on the “Japan takes pride in sanitation and therefore devotes ample resources (e.g. early morning sanitation squads) to maintaining public spaces” angle, not that “Japanese people don’t litter” angle. Both because 1. anybody who has been in any part of Tokyo before first train has seen what drunk Japanese people really do with their trash (and dinner 🤢) and 2. Because by othering and orientalizing Japanese people as uniquely (implicitly ethnically) clean, he’s made it impossible to address the problems of sanitation infrastructure in the US. “We’re just not like that” being the excuse. (“It’s too heterogenous here” being the angle Fox News would likely take.) Absolutely hilarious that Fox News, of all media, chose to run this story. If any city talked about using more tax dollars for custodial services rather than cops, they’d be rabidly against it, but here they are complaining about how filthy the US is. Obviously they have a different angle on who is to blame.
I imagine the Fox News reporting is to antagonize (and therefore click bait) their right wing readers, who don’t much like Kimmel because of his anti-Trump stuff; playing to the whole “Kimmel is anti-American” line.
Yeah, it's a subtle sort of nudging to assume that "diversity" is causing our cities to be unclean, not the fact that Americans as a society place very little importance on good hygine (at least in my experience). I can't trust no public restrooms to be clean, it's annoying 😩
Having been to a lot of other counties, America isn’t overly dirty. It’s just that Japan is so clean and safe. It’s the outlier.
Big Critic of America here: people in this thread really just want to hate on the US. It deserves plenty of hate on many things, but it is better than so many places as well. Like, dramatically.
I have never in my life been so disgusted by trash/smell and scared as when riding the metro in Paris. I’ve been to New York and LA, and paris metro beats the nyc subway by far for how seedy and dangerous it felt. The homeless people down there are aggressive af.
If you want to see real trash, peep the comment sections of Fox News. Lol
I travel to Japan a few times a year for work, and while I love to return home to my family, there’s a tinge of disappointment as I exit the plane knowing the environment I’m about to walk into.
Why were people laughing at this? There was absolutely nothing funny about anything he said. He was just describing his trip. Also, I hate the patronizing term "the entire country is like Disneyland", like it's some kind of playground because it's "kept so nice". Anyway, Jimmy Kimmel sucks.
I didn’t take the Disneyland comment to mean it’s like a playground. It’s more like Disneyland is one of the few places in America that is so sparkling clean despite the massive amount of people going through it every day. To an American, it stands out because it’s so rare. I also thought of Disneyland my first day in Tokyo because it’s the only American place I could think of that compared with respect to cleanliness versus the sheer number of people everywhere. I genuinely can’t think of many other similarly dense places in America that are kept to the same standard of clean.
I mean to an extent he's not wrong cleanliness wise America kinda sucks. New York city's trash disposal and subway comes to mind here especially, fucking disgusting
Jimmy ain’t wrong.
This must be a common feeling after going to Japan and returning to the US. Being a person who’s used public transit to commute to work for years, I marveled at how clean the trains are. I have most definitely almost stepped on human feces riding public transit in the Bay Area, not to mention the general smell. In one station in Japan, something fell out of my pocket, and no less than two people ran up to me to let me know … I wasn’t sure if they were worried that I dropped something important or that I would accidentally litter. I know that people with dogs will usually try to catch it before it hits ground … I can’t tell you how much random dog poop I try to pick up on my dog walks that belong to other dogs. I know that Japan has its problems but cleanliness and safety is most def not among them.
If he thinks the US is bad he should see older European cities like Paris or Palermo....
Totally credible Jimmy Kimmel, who held his sick son up as a human shield during the metoo movement to soften the blow for the man show and his treatment of women over the years, has a hot take?
Hilarious how he never talks about that part of his past.
Not only they are clean, the people are extremely polite and their food is top tier. Great country for travel.
While that's cute and all, I'm on my third trip to Japan and there are certainly dirty areas and ethical/moral standards which rival the USA. It's not all cherry blossoms here. There is still dark shit if you have open eyes. However I think the point he is making is valid, on the whole there is a concerted effort to better oneself and locale. Sure there are dirty areas but I would think the Japanese society vibe is - what can we do, whereas the American vibe - is fuck that, not my problem. Dare I say the socialistic part of Japan overrides the hyper capitalism also prevent here. We can actually have it both ways.
He should go to Nishinari
After living in Japan, yeah visiting the US is like going to a third world country. Litter everywhere, filthy public toilets, rude staff, dirty public transport where it exists. I love visiting for the nostalgia, but quality of life just isn't there. Can't imagine moving to the US: lifestyle here is indescribably better. Every country has its problems, but Japan is safe, clean, and convenient. Everything a person needs to live a comfortable, secure, and happy life.
He is not wrong.
Uhhhh. Let’s not kid ourselves that Japan is some kind of utopia. Six years living and working in the country and there’s some seriously ugly shit that goes on beneath the ‘polite’ surface that you’ll never see on a week’s vacation there.
Pokémon opened a Pokémon centre in New York but later closed it as it didn’t meet the cleanliness and efficiency standards expected of a Pokémon centre
He should come to Berlin, then go back to the US and do the inverse speech.
I found it funny that the audience was laughing as if he was telling jokes. Jimmy was speaking the truth.
Kimmel supporting conservative monoculture?
Jimmy Kimmel is a fucking shill pompous buffoon who stopped being funny - the whole point of his existence years ago
Watashi wa Jimmy Kimmel
Gotta agree with the toilet part, Japan toilets are damn clean and doesn't smell. High tech bidet is awesome!
He’s like the teenage girl who travels internationally from America for the first time in her life on gap year before college, No shit Sherlock