Hiking isn’t the same thing as walking around a town or city as a tourist.
I didn’t find the “carry your trash with you” to be too big of a hassle but what is truly barbaric is the social taboo on strolling through a park on a nice autumn day sipping your coffee!
Just since I’m posting here I did not experience what others have with the restrooms. The ones in the kobini were nasty and we often weren’t able to find public restrooms unless we happened to enter into a mall or somewhere like that where they seemed clean enough but not noteworthy. The Japanese excell in other areas of cleanliness though and you can be sure that many products will be aggressively double or triple-plastic wrapped.
> but what is truly barbaric is the social taboo on strolling through a park on a nice autumn day sipping your coffee!
Wait, what? Has anyone ever said anything to you when you strolled around a park drinking coffee? I've been in Japan over 10 years and do that all the time, no one has given a shit about it. The only time I ever hear about these "taboos" is when foreigners try to tell other foreigners how they should behave in Japan, like it has some mystique about it or something.