Japanese Team work!

Have you seen Japanese fans cleaning up the soccer stadium?
Or the athletes cleaning up their locker room after their use?

You wonder where that custom comes from???

Of course it is well known how Japanese elementary school kids clean up their own classroom, but it happens at the local community too.

In our community, almost every month, there's some kinds of clean-up events at least once.
You should join in if you can, because it is just amazing how people work together without being told what to do.
It's an art!

One of those event happened today.

Early in the morning, 8:00a.m., one member from each household come to the event, meeting up at the community storage house.
The head of the community greets and give a word of official start of the event, then divide the people into some groups.
Each member has a grass cutter, rake, and other useful tools, then head off to the site.

Without saying anything much, people starts cutting the grass.
This time, it was the high place on the slope, but the trees and branches needed to be trimmed.
Everyone works very hard.
Some use the grass cutter to cut the grass, others bring ladder to reach the high places, and yet another who cannot use grass cutter or ladder, like me, use the rake and collect all the branches on the road.

After some time, everyone takes a short break, chit-chatting with each other drinking a bottle of green tea. Talking and laughing together.

Then, it's time to work again!

This time, someone, again without being told, brings a small truck to collect the piles of branches and grass on the ground.
Before you know it, someone else is helping out to put the piles on to the truck.

It always amazes me, even being a Japanese myself, to see how smoothly everything flows.

Sometimes, we collect the trash along the road, which we hardly find anything.
I believe the big part of this is because we locals know it comes back to us.
If we make a mess, we are the one to clean up!

So this is the secret of Japan being so tidy and clean.
Japanese work as a team!