Japanese teach Parisiens about street tidiness

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jonnyboy at 10:15 PM JST - 26th March

The Japandese don't get it, and i'm surprised nobody here commented on the fact that this "environmental" group is sponsored by a tobacco firm.

and a beverage maker! so that's the PET bottles as well! bit like punching someone and then giving them a band-aid, eh?
grafton at 10:35 PM JST - 26th March

jonnyboy at 10:15 PM JST - 26th March

Do you not think that punching somebody & then giving them a band aid is a nice thing to do, rather than not give them a band aid?
hakujinsensei at 07:59 AM JST - 27th March

nonsense

how many hundreds of kilos of jet fuel was poured into the atmosphere for this environmental project?

and very few people noticed that it was sponsored as most charitable events are by the tobacco and alcohol conglomerates tying to put the clean on their image.

when are people going to begin to look critically at these kinds of things. there is without a doubt a heavy minus on the aggregate social benefit here if one factors in the good will the death merchants receive, the environmental damage from the transportation, and of course the nonsense of any japanese trying to put forth japan as anything other than a land awash in their own garbage. honmachi may be clean, just step down the street to namba or nishinari ku to see the real japan.

this reminds me of the 'white band' anti poverty campaign a couple of years ago and the fact that when none of the funds was going to provide aid to the poor was uncovered, the chairman just responded that they never claimed the funds were going to be used as aid.

be smart. dont give to organizations that suck at the trough of the death merchants. be critical and check to see if there if the positives supersede the social costs of projects that you might think of sponsorin
Smythe at 09:50 AM JST - 27th March

As a Canadian only & never been outside of my country bar a few times I was down in the USA to race m/cs. From day one of my parents teaching me to drive a car or when learning to ride a m/c on my own back in 1946. I have never tossed things to the curb or road side. It is just human nature of me.

Yet for some time I have seen people off to the sides of some highways collecting littler into orange/red bags. Becoming so common now that I do not stop to ask what they are doing.

How can Cdns to humans be that filthy I have to wonder?
888naff at 09:52 AM JST - 27th March

Japan has to be one of the cleanest countries in the world.
kurisutofu at 11:25 AM JST - 27th March

888naff ... seems you haven't read the previous posts ^_^.

I was thinking that if the countryside is that dirty, that might be a good thing to take that in picture and create a website to expose it, with the name of the place and the date. Japanese might feel ashamed or something and might decide to act against that.

If all foreigners worked together, we could even create this website in any languages!
Pukey2 at 02:43 AM JST - 28th March

Can't remember what it was like in Paris, but Nice was full of dog shit everywhere. Why would you clean up the place when the locals themselves don't give a damn?

My advice to the Japanese - come home and clean the place here. Just came back from a lovely scenic spot in Kyoto. Saw a couple of old sofas dumped near a hiking trail.
LIBERTAS at 04:16 AM JST - 28th March

Japan's beaches are worse than Paris' streets. Start at home...........and don't forget the 100,000+ unmarked toxic waste dumps here. Minamata, itai-itai etc. etc. etc. Clean up Japan first. then go preach. America could do likewise!
Good_Jorb at 04:42 AM JST - 28th March

Start at home...........and don't forget the 100,000+ unmarked toxic waste dumps here. Minamata, itai-itai etc. etc. etc. Clean up Japan first. then go preach. America could do likewise!

Odd and slightly silly comment.

They didn't fly from Japan to Paris just to clean up Paris and preach about cleaniness. The volunteers, as per the article, live and work/study in Paris.
jonnyboy at 12:18 PM JST - 28th March

Do you not think that punching somebody & then giving them a band aid is a nice thing to do, rather than not give them a band aid?

i think you're totally missing the point of that little saying
helloklitty at 06:46 PM JST - 28th March

I have always Japanese people to be rather slovenly. In their homes, they do just enough to get by and at the last minute or the next day. Someone is always leaving a can of coffee in the parking lot or tossing a lid from their ice cream cup in a bush. I've never seen let alone done that in my time in the U.S.
IvanCoughalot at 10:04 PM JST - 28th March

I saw three different revered members of our senior management age group - navy-blue suited, white-shirted and gyoza-reeking only last evening, within a fifteen-minute walk of my gaff, all demonstrating that they were more than qualified to give masterclass lessons in something the french take pride in:

Voiding one's bladder on a public thoroughfare.

There are many similarities between these two great cultures, non?
space_monkey at 11:31 AM JST - 30th March

Japanese kids have to spend 20 minutes every day cleaning their own school. This is something I believe that every single school in the world should do.

But Japanese believe that they are only responsible for cleaning their own space. I asked about 100 Japanese why the beaches in Japan were so dirty and the answer I uniformly got was that the beach does not belong to them so they don't care. Japanese only care about keeping what is theirs clean. This is mostly to avoid public shame or ridicule. Lake Biwa and Mt Fuji are classic example of Japanese public spaces being taken for granted and heavily polluted with trash. It is one of the great contradictions of this country. Personally I think keeping your own place neat, tidy, and super clean but then littering public spaces, like beaches and parks, smacks of hypocrisy and is quite frankly ridiculous.

This is why this article is so surprising to me.

I applaud these volunteers, I think its magical, although I don't understand their motivation in the slightest. It is truly bizarre. Who on this planet truly understands the mind of the Japanese?

Maybe they are out to make JTB some more money!! I am cynical.
Disillusioned at 09:11 AM JST - 1st April

Japanese teach Parisiens about street tidiness

And, who taught the Japanese?

Japanese kids have to spend 20 minutes every day cleaning their own school. This is something I believe that every single school in the world should do.

Unfortunately, as much as kids cleaning schools does enforce cleanliness into their environment, the problem is, the schools are not cleaned properly and are bacteria factories. I am surprised there aren't more cases of dermatitis and warts spread through he schools. I don't wanna touch diseases that can be transmitted through toilets because most toilets in public are disgusting. Bleach is a dangerous substance, so the kids don't use it to clean toilets. Are they cleaning them or just wiping away the stains?
Farmboy at 05:25 PM JST - 1st April

This could be a chance for cultural exchange. Japan can clean French rivers and France can clean Japanese rivers. Neither seems to notice the condition of their own rivers.