When I first came to Japan I inherited a small noisy washing machine that was stored outside my house on the balcony of my apartment. I would throw my clothes in there with a little detergent, and then come back outside in an hour and pull the clothes out and hang them up right on the balcony to dry. It is a pretty common way to do laundry around here, but during cold weather you can freeze your ass off hanging the laundry, and if it is raining you can pretty much forget about doing laundry at all.
That’s why I love our washing machine now. We are pretty busy and not around very much during the day, but that doesn’t stop us from taking care of the laundry. We load up the clothes in washing machine, and then set a timer. After nine hours it kicks on, washes the clothes, then goes ahead and dries them for us, too. I get home twelve hours later and the warm, clean laundry is ready to be folded. Rain? No problem. Typhoon? Who cares? I’m glad I experienced doing laundry on the cold balcony so I can appreciate the technology we’ve got now.
Actually, there are a lot of timers in our house. Our rice cooker, living room and bedroom air conditioners, heated floors, computers and media server, ventilation fan for the shower, dishwasher, and even the digital picture frame operate on timers. Living in the future!
