On the issue of garbage cans, there is a somewhat interesting Wikipedia article in Japanese:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%...81%BF%E7%AE%B1

It notes that there is a law about how many garbage cans have to be available to the public, but it is expensive to maintain public garbage cans in Japan, especially because there is no incentive for users to sort their trash, so whoever picks it up ends up having to re-sort it. Most municipalities deal with the law by asking convenience stores and railway operators to let the public use their trash cans. On top of that there is the fairly well-known fact that many crowded areas such as subway stations lost their trash cans following the sarin attacks in Tokyo years ago.