They're less common, but garbage and recycling bins are easily found if you make a modest effort to look for them. They're just less ubiquitous than they usually are in the west.

There's also a structural problem imposed by Japan's rigorous management of solid waste in urban areas. Single-stream disposal practically doesn't exist. If a municipality placed general waste bins on corners (as seen in many western urban areas), they'd have to have folks manually sorting whatever ends up in them, which isn't economical.