Why Japan is the Cleanest Country in the World

There are many things to love about living in Japan. It’s a fun country with kind people who take a real interest in how foreigners view their country. Tons of great food to explore. Heated toilet seats that wash your butt for you. Also, Japan is the cleanest country in the world…well, mostly. Let’s learn more!

• One of the first experiences I had in Japan was a sento, a public bath with several large baths and a sauna, where my body became cleaner than God intended a body to be. I was hooked, and it was the beginning of a long relationship with many onsen hot springs and other kinds of baths in Japan.
• Japanese homes are designed to maximize cleanliness. Dirty shoes are removed and left in a lowered area of the house called a genkan, which is considered part of the outside. When bathing, you always wash your body outside the tub in a waterproof area, so you’re clean when you actually get into the tub.
• Cleaning is baked into the culture here. Children at Japanese schools clean their own classrooms and toilets, which builds character and saves school resources. Also, Japanese always clean their houses from top to bottom before the start of a new year, a tradition carried over from ritual cleaning of Buddhist temples.
• The Japanese have some interesting hang-ups. Anything related to feet is automatically dirty, even if they just came out of the bath. If I bought new socks from a store and put them on our dining room table, my wife would chase me out of the house with a broom.
• Japan can be so clean, it can cause culture shock. A friend of mine works in a Sanyo factory where workers from various countries are employed. The bathrooms at the factory are extremely clean, so much so that workers from an Asian country I won’t name would gather there to eat lunch, sitting on the floor of the bathroom and spreading out their bento lunches. This is not something that’s done in Japan, to say the least.
• Japan isn’t perfect, and there are some major cleanliness issues, including filthy beaches (especially along the Sea of Japan). Mt. Fuji was denied UNESCO registry in the 1990s because of the huge trash problem caused by Japanese climbers discarding styrofoam ramen bowls as they climbed. Happily the government shamed them into stopping, and Mt. Fuji is clean now.
• Casual litter is still a problem, and when I take my 4 km daily walks around J-List, I always see some trash, and often pick it up. Once I observed a child tossing trash on the ground at a park, and I unleashed holy hell on him, asking, “If Japanese people didn’t love their own country enough to not litter, who will?” I’m sure I left an impression on the kid.

J-List is an official Touhou shop, and we’ve been carrying great figures, plush toys, and more, including all the Touhou games that you can play on any PC. We also love to stock doujin music CDs, which are BGM and vocal song collections made by Japan’s top up-and-coming musicians, all with the official approval of Zun. But these can never be restocked, so be sure to browse our music CD selection before the items you want are gone! And be sure to check the sample tracks embedded in our product pages.