"It's Gomi Night! It's Gomi Night!"

[Taro Toporific]

This is too good to pass up , even if it may have been posted already during vacation....

Gomi Night
Life as a gaijin in Japan.
PAUL GERALD | 12/31/2004, MemphisFlyer.com, Travel

...Put it all together, and what you have is GAIJIN making crazy money -- like $20,000 a year for working two hours a day -- while living on the wrong end of town and spending their time idling around, drinking, and/or trying to freak out the locals.
It was on just such a night that I witnessed the spectacle known as Gomi Night.
We were lounging on the tatami mats in some gaijin crash pad, trying to decide if we should spend our evening eating on the subway, drinking in public, or going out to hit on Japanese girls -- all utterly taboo and wildly entertaining -- when somebody ran in and started shouting, "It's Gomi Night! It's Gomi Night!"
Gomi, you might not know, is Japanese for garbage. It seems that in each neighborhood, there's one night each month on which local residents put out their bigger garbage items, stuff like TV sets and tables and chairs and various appliances. All of these things work, you understand. It's just that A) Japanese folks buy new stuff all the time -- America on steroids -- and B) Japanese homes are incredibly small. So, when you get a new TV set, the old one goes out on Gomi Night.
Sometime early the next morning, teams of men from the sodai gomi ("big garbage") agency come by and pick these items up for resale. And sometime before that, in the wee wee hours, some Japanese folks come out to get them, ashamed to be seen in need of such items.
Not so the gonzo gaijin. We aggressively, as a matter of principle, didn't care. So, when the Gomi hit the streets, out came the gaijin! It was very much like cockroaches coming out for the leftover pizza.
Launching from the chaos at the crash pad -- every unit of which was furnished with gomi -- I bought a can of beer in the vending machine downstairs (remember, America on steroids)...

[Ketou]

Ahh the good old days.
I remember seeing good stuff like stereos and tellys in the early ninties, but not so much any more.

[American Oyaji]

I used to work for a garbage company (gomiyasan).

I sometimes was assigned to go pick up sodai gomi. I picked up a Panasonic Wappuro (Word Proessor) complete with attachments, software and extra ribbons.

I later sold it for 10,000 yen. Easy drinking money.

[FG Lurker]

This is too good to pass up , even if it may have been posted already during vacation....

Oh the memories! My first apartment was furnished mostly with gomi.

Including a rather large wooden desk that I ........... took on the train!

Yes, I had been in country for about 2 weeks and I came across this desk. It was way too far to carry, no taxi would help... So I took it on the train. Holy shit, even now I remember some of those looks!

About 10 stops on one subway line and then 5 stops on a train line. I'm laughing my ass off as I type this.

Oh to be so green again!!

[Taro Toporific]

[FG Lurker]

[Taro Toporific]