Garbage Trucks

Imagine if you will, you are walking down the street when from behind you hear a familiar tinkling melody; immediately your mind conjures up images of happily painted trucks, and your stomach begins to long for the cool delicious ice cream treats that are sure to come.

You turn around, reaching for your wallet, when to your surprise you are not confronted with a happily painted ice cream truck but with a happily painted garbage truck?

That's the sign post up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!

Seriously, what more can I say? Look at that garbage truck and it plays music! That is total insanity. When I turned around and saw this, I felt my mind snap a little bit.

Let me try to explain (if I can), here in Japan you can only throw away certain types of garbage on certain days: Monday may be for trash, Tuesday for paper, Wednesday for plastic, Thursday for cans and Friday for trash again. Now if you don't get your garbage out in time, you may have to hold onto it for another week and that stinks (literally), so to help alert people, the trucks play little melodies so that you know the garbage truck is coming and you'd better get your ass in gear!

It is going to take years for me to overcome my conditioning and my first impulse isn't to grab some money and dash out of the house screaming "stop!" at the top of my lungs.