Laundry in Japan

Date: Wed, Feb 24, 1995 2:33 AM EST
From: HTO2.aol.com
Subj: Coin Laundry
To: --Email to family--

At the coin laundry

It's an ordinance--city, prefecture, Im not sure--that says that no laundromat will have more than three (working) machines. Two of these machines MUST be of the domestic variety.

Domestic variety? you ask. Yes, let me digress.

My first Japanese apartment was in Kyoto, in 1986. Pretty part of town. Pretty far from the rest of town. Up in the northwest, where a few minute's bike ride would get you into the mountains, and at night (late, late, and did never abate) could be heard the screaming engines of the bosozoku: gangs of helmet-less, muffler-less, license-less, reckless, 3-to-a-bike-hoodlums on stolen wheels taunting the cops to give them chase. One of the problems of living in a first-world country is that people, especially young folk, run out of things to amuse themselves with.

But not me. Walk through my apartment and out onto the balcony and there sat my laundry machine: two feet square, three feet high, allegator-green molded plastic; you could pick it up with one hand to clean underneath it. Top loading, with more molded plastic for its cover (no hinges, just take it off and hang it on the side), this amazing machine kept my life rooted in the third world -- and kept me from joining my younger, shorter, glue-sniffing friends out on streets; red-lining up and down their gearboxes. That is because I had something to do.

Automatic is not the word that comes to mind when I remember my plastic-fantastic laundry machine. One loaded the clothes and detergent (not more than about 2 shirts, 5 socks and a handkerchief), opened the cold water valve, watched the water level rise, closed the valve, set the wind-up timer to the desired washing time, waited for the timer to run out, pulled the plug to let the water out, took the clothes out of the wash tub and put them into the vertical spinner, set the timer for that, waited, took them out of the spinner, back into the wash for rinsing, water, timer, wait, plug, spinner, timer, wait, water, timer, wait ...

In the time it took me to do one load of laundry, my bosozoku would-be companions would have several enjoyable run-ins with the National Police. Of course the National Police rarely went over 30 KPH inside the city. This put the onus on the Bozos to periodically circle within an intersection -- holding up traffic -- while waiting for the black-and-whites to catch up. But no matter, because I was busy keeping one step ahead of a washboard.

Now Ma has told me about her first laundry machine. Pretty similar in the working of it, although I believe she had an overhead wringer. Hers was a solid machine made of steel, of course, and mine was about as substantial as Ms. Barbie Dolls. Then again, they still sell toy laundry machines in this country. Ma's might be a tad harder to find.

Well, back in the laundromat and I'm waiting again. In the time that it has taken to compose this, the Whirlpool has satisfied one customer and is now giving my made-in-Japan T-shirts an intercultural experience. The plastic-fantastics, on the other hand, 1 of them broken, make fairly good writing platforms for TFW's Macintosh Duo250.

Stay tuned for more exciting news.