Ueno park 上野公園
Ueno Park (上野公園) in Tokyo is famous for its cherry blossoms. Unfortunately, we were a bit too early (in late March) to see many. Another week or two and this road would have been really spectacular. The fact that there weren’t many blossoms didn’t seem to deter the Japanese from having all sorts of hanami (花見, flower viewing) parties.
If you look closely at this picture (maybe after clicking on it so it becomes larger) you’ll see hundreds of bins for recycling on either side of this road. It’s rare that you see trash bins in Japan even though things are cleaner than just about any place on earth. But in Ueno Park during the hanami season there are more recycling bins than anywhere I’ve seen before.
The sign on the lower right says そう資源 別ゴミ箱 which means something like “preserve our natural resources by separating garbage into the different bins.” On the lower left it says カン (cans) and 生ゴミ (living garbage, like banana peels, etc.)
I should also mention that the above picture was taken at about 10 a.m. in the morning. Imagine the number of people in the afternoon and evening when the blossoms are going crazy!