[vladf]

Yes perhaps one day cities like Tokyo will catch up

[mc3301]

Most of Tokyo (and Japan) doesn't have an excessive amount of pedestrians' litter. Public garbage cans are rare, though many convenience stores and some train stations have them.

Is there litter? Yes. Is there much less than, say, Vancouver, Bangkok or London? Absolutely.

It's due to a couple things that tourists may not be used to: -Be prepared to bring your garbage with you until you are home.

-Garbage is sorted differently in each municipality in Japan, and often the garbage bags cost money. Who is going to buy those bags and sort someone else's garbage?

-It's changing, but walking around consuming snacks, food, drinks in Japan is not that common. People do that at specific locations, thus they don't find themselves with empty food wrappers and drink cups while walking around. Thus, they don't see a need for public garbage cans.

-Crows make a quick mess of garbage here. Observing the above points means that (most) of Japan doesn't need stinky, sticky, flies-and-wasps-buzzing-around, crow-magnet garbage cans, which look almost as bad as litter everywhere.

[satvikpendem]

Have you seen the litter that piles up late at night in many Japanese cities? People simply leave their trash everywhere but the city cleans it up by morning. Tokyo is one of the most littered cities I've seen at midnight compared to any western city.

[ziofill]

Vancouver is pretty clean, have you ever been to Paris or Rome? (I’ve lived in all three)

[eska]

It’s not litter that causes the rat issue in NYC, it is the huge masses of household and business garbage.

[whimsicalism]

they do just pile up garbage bags on pickup day that i've seen

[cjbgkagh]

Never been to Japan, but AFAIK they used to have trash cans but got rid of them due to a sarin gas terrorist attack in 1995.

[catlifeonmars]

Tokyo is significantly cleaner than NYC, or any major US city. I think this is GPs point.