My 2yo has had a stomach bug since Tuesday evening. While we should have been celebrating Setsubun (a midwinter festival) and throwing beans at ogres, we were throwing sheets and towels and pajamas in the washer. Which brings me to my favorite topic of late: Japanese appliances.
My combo washer/dryer is the latest high tech appliance in Japan. It's a front loader with more functions and buttons than a 1990s VCR. I have the ability to siphon my bath water and use it for the first wash. (Which I don't do, because that kind of eeks me out.) I have the ability to "hot mist" my clothes. I have the ability to wash and dry all in one extremely long cycle. What it doesn't have is capacity. It's the largest washer on the market, but it freaks out if I put in two bath towels at the same time. It weighs the laundry in the drum and tells me how much detergent to put in, so I know if I've hit max weight of 9 kgs or 20 lbs.
9 kgs is not a lot when your 2 yo has gone through 3 sets of PJs, two comforter covers, two sheets, 4 pillowcases, numerous towels and also got Mom's polarfleece and Dad's sweatshirt. I spent Wednesday doing 4 loads of laundry and hanging them on my laundry pole. Fortunately, it was a nice day. Why didn't I use the dryer? Well, another fabulous Japanese design feature. Since my combo W/D runs on 100 volts, it takes over two hours to dry a 6 kg load. Yes, you can wash 9 kgs, but it can only dry 6 kgs at a time. And while this tiny load is drying, the rest of the stinky laundry is piled high waiting for a turn.
Lest you think I am ungrateful, I do appreciate that I have a washer and it is a fully automatic one. My first washer in Japan was a pink twin drum outside on my balcony. You had to load the washer and turn on the tap to get the water in the wash drum. When it was done, you had to transfer the wash to the spinner drum and turn on the tap to rinse and spin it. This was fabulous in February when it was snowing. Of course, at that time I was single, so I could avoid laundry for several days.
So, instead of "Oni wa soto, Fuku wa uchi" (Ogres out, Happiness in), I am "Sentakumono wa soto, Fuku wa uchi" (Laundry out, Happiness in). Happy Belated Setsubun.
2 comments:
Oh this SO reminds me of our "Christmas from Hades..." All four of us sick; missed holiday festivities.
Any hope of you getting benefit of seeing hubby home early a couple days a week? There was a story circulating here about how some Japanese firms were sending workers home early two days a week to help raise the birth rate? I'm only advocating the time not the extra munchkin...
I saw your post on Betsy's blog the other day and was pleased to stumble upon Zenbei because our family is interested in moving to Japan. Your washer/dryer description is hilarious, especially about the pink drum. Having a sick kid has a way of changing the "mountain of laundry" to "ability to wash it" ratio. Yes, festivities definitely don't always go as planned when you have kids. We once went to the beach for Thanksgiving and all 3 of our kids got sick with a stomach virus. A holiday meal would have been ridiculous, so my husband and I shared a frozen pizza from a pharmacy because that was the only store that was open. At least we managed to keep our sense of humor about it. Hope your son feels better soon.
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