It was “gomi” (garbage) day in Joi Ito’s community – a day when everyone gets together to clean up trash and unwanted junk that’s been illegally dumped.

On my trip to Japan (this was in about 1993), I went hiking on Gomiyama – in other words, I found a trail that went up through the bamboo forests behind one of the shrines in Matsuyama on Shikoku.

Welcome to Mount Garbage

It was a nice hike at first, although there were lots and lots of thick, sticky spiderwebs across the trail. I climbed up and up, until finally the trail petered out… just below a big pile of trash that had been dumped over the side of the road near the top of the hillside. There were refrigerators, bikes, bags and bags of garbage, and a few small rusty motorbikes.

I clambered over and went on up the road, until I reached the true end – it appeared there had been a weather station or something governmental at one time up there, and the view was spectacular except for the piles of garbage all around.

I went back by way of the road, having stumbled coming back and messed up my ankle. And everywhere, the forest was pretty, except for the gomi thrown on both sides of the road.

I’m a little sad that it’s apparently still common to throw unwanted stuff out by the side of the road in Japan. But I’m glad that there are community cleanup days for everyone to work together to clear away the mess.