Yes, I figured that is what you meant, which is why I then explained why it still sucks. What if I don't want to eat something entirely then and there in the konbini I bought it...? What if I have trash from some other source?
> it seems to have been mostly a response to citizens avoiding rubbish collection fees at home by taking household waste to public bins.
Yes, that was highlighted in the LLM report. And is an example of the perverse dynamics and poverty mindset, where an entire society is distorted in the name of conservation, where the high usage of trash cans becomes a reason to not have them. (I am still thinking about the multiple 3/4-star luxury hotels I stayed in which provided some of the lowest-quality gas-station-tier toilet paper I have ever used - a false economy all the more unjustifiable given how little toilet paper a guest would use thanks to the wonderful bidets!)
> but we were prepared
Precisely. I was confused for the first week: "how does this work? How are the locals throwing their trash away away? Surely they don't just reorganize their lives around this limitation, and tolerate things that few other societies tolerate, and let an obsession with litter and recycling run their lives and dictate when and where they can eat or even just drink some water on a hot humid day? There must be some trick or convention I am not getting, maybe some trash cans hidden away somewhere under an unfamiliar appearance." And then I realized, "oh. They do. That's how it works." And I too reorganized my life to submit to the trash planners.