For a country so strapped for natural resources, Japan sure wastes a lot of paper and plastic. I mean, really, this is the land of individually wrapped food and products!
In the depato, the finest fruits and vegetables are wrapped and sold individually. We're talking about apples, pears, Asian pears, persimmons. After a lunch of prepared food from the depato one day, we were shocked by the amount of paper and plastic we had to throw away.
Cookies and candies are wrapped individually, then encased in a large plastic bag; when purchased, they are put into a larger plastic bag. When I bought charms at a local drugstore, the saleslady put all the charms in a paper bag, then gave me individual paper bags to put the charms in, then put the whole thing in a plastic bag.
At the bookstore, we bought some paperbacks to read on the train (I bought a book of short stories by Haruki Murakami, great stuff, yes, in English), the clerk carefully put a paper cover on each book.
Speaking of wrapping, it's a treat to buy a present for someone at the depato. The saleslady will always ask if the items being purchased are presents. If yes, she will carefully wrap the items individually, ask you to label the items, then put all the items into a large bag. Oh yeah, when we bought cream puffs one day, the puffs were carefully arranged in a box with a mini-ice pack. Really, the care with which items are wrapped and packaged is amazing.
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