Japan has a passionate but destructive and entirely codependent relationship with packaging. Especially plastic packaging. It drives me insane, but I keep forgetting to learn how to say "no bag thanks" and most of the time the checkout person has already wrapped something up before I've even noticed.
Example: Yesterday I bought a whole bunch of groceries at the supermarket that included two packets of fried tofu. This tofu was packaged in air and watertight plastic wrapping. And yet the checkout woman still felt it necessary to wrap them in a second plastic bag before putting them in my shopping bag (which was a reuseable cloth bag, but only because I brought my own).
Another example: Recently I bought a new toothbrush. It came in a cardboard-backed plastic bubble package. At the checkout it was wrapped in another layer of plastic all by itself.
Another example, although admittedly not involving quite as much plastic: Within our first week of being here we bought a couple of kitchen pots. The pots and lids were individually wrapped in plastic, which then went in cardboard boxes, which were then wrapped in paper, which were then carefully placed in large thick paper bags with handles for us to take home. And just in case the paper bag suddenly popped open and embarrassingly spilled its contents on the ground in a public place, the paper bag was sealed shut with a piece of sticky tape.
Favourite example: A while ago I bought cotton buds. A pack of 200, which came in 8 individually wrapped packs of 25. So that's already two layers of plastic between the cotton buds and the outside world. At the checkout? You guessed it, another individual plastic bag before going in the main (plastic) shopping bag.
GAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
And then to accomodate this excessive use of petroleum byproducts, the country has devised an elaborate and time-consuming waste disposal system that requires strict adherence to the rules to actually work. Remember
this post?
Now before you go and tell me all your anecdotes about checkout people in Australia (and elsewhere) who like to put anything used to clean things in a separate plastic bag before putting it in the main shopping bag, regardless of how well its primary package, bottle, wrapping or other confinement does the job of holding it in, I already know. All I'm saying is, Japan has turned packaging into a cultural phenomenon.
