Old steel Fanta cans on a lonely ridge

Old Steel Fanta Cans Masquerading as Archaeological Scrap

While Japan on the whole takes enormous pride in disposing of rubbish thoughtfully particularly in the urban environs, some mountains with Mt. Fuji being a prime example, still haven’t quite got the message out to hikers that its probably best not to discard your empty wrappers and PET bottles. This brings me to the subject of steel cans, in particular old and I mean really old grape flavoured Fanta cans which I came across on my recent hike up Mt. Takanosu. I decided to take a couple of snaps of them and do some research to try and uncover their provenance.

With a little digging around I was able to narrow down their date of manufacture to somewhere around 1969-72 which was when the 350ml Kyoto made cans last ran off the production line. In total, I spotted about four of the little blighter’s and wondered why someone hadn’t bothered to pick them up. Maybe one reason was given 45 years has passed since they were consumed up there many probably consider them to be virtual archaeological scrap and to remove them would be bad form. At any rate they remain in great nick given they have weathered for so long and will probably continue to do so for some time yet, as according to Wiki Answers we still don’t know how much time is required for steel cans to decompose.
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