The absence is well-known and described in places like Wikipedia. Also, how many major capital cities in Japan should I spend time in before it's not 'anecdata'? Should I get a sample of another 10 or 20 Tokyos before you're satisfied?
FWIW, I did a LLM research report about numbers, and they pulled up some interesting cites: https://gwern.net/doc/japan/2026-11-03-gpt6astra-japansmissi... Places like Osaka have deliberately removed their city trashcans (from 5000 to zero since 2007, while Kyoto apparently got rid of 500 recently), and the vending machine trashcans are inadequate because they're only supposed to be for bottles but of course pick up a lot of other trash because what other option is there, while konbinis report problems with people using their tiny little trashcans a lot. There's also some interesting dynamics here where the overuse of trashcans becomes the justification for removing them, thereby externalizing all the costs onto people (especially tourists, according to the Japan Tourism Agency's regular large-scale surveys, where a shockingly large percentage single out trash cans as a problem in their visit).
> but there are plenty that are adjacent to where you are likely generating rubbish (or recycling) - eg. konbibis.
As already noted, I didn't see many adjacent to konbinis. (Inside them, sure, but that is definitionally not a 'public rubbish bin'. That's a private one, and we felt awkward just going into stores to use their trash. Similar to using a store's restroom without any intent of shopping there. Some "plenty"!)
> I suspect spending all your time in the frustratingly tourist-dense triad likely skews your experiences of the country
Yes, I expect it skews my trash bin prevalence too high. Because tourist-heavy places should have more, not less.