Buying Tickets to Dispose of Large Items
Large garbage items, known as “soudai gomi” (壮大ごみ), have to be disposed of separately from regular garbage items.
Anything that cannot fit in a regular 40L garbage bag is considered “large”. If you have a large item that can be broken down into small enough parts to fit into a 40L bag, you can put the parts in the bag and dispose of them on the appropriate day. If you can’t break the item down, you have to make arrangements for its disposal.
The instructions are included in the “Oversized garbage” section of the Garbage Sorting Guide on the English version of the city hall website. There is a link to the places where you can by your “large garbage tickets”, but the list is in Japanese. If you can’t read Japanese and you want some ideas of places to try, here is a list of some possibilities.
- Coco
- Family Mart
- Homac
- Japan Agriculture (JA) Branches
- Kasumi
- Lawson’s
- Ministop
- Sankus
- Seven Eleven
Not every branch of these stores may carry the tickets, so if you want a surefire way to get the tickets, go to Kasumi (in Takezono, LaLa Garden or Sakura Technopark, for example) or the 7-11 by Doho Park. What you need is called “sodai gomi shori ken” (粗大ごみ処理券).
Before you dispose of large items, be sure to try to find new homes for them, either by trying to sell them or give them away through the TAIRA, Tell and Sell Japan, or Freecycle Japan mailing lists, or by giving them to a recycle shop.