All I can say is, I spent 130,000Y for a washer/dryer and it is the best money I have ever spent here in Japan. I fully support your goal to step into the A.M.

hmmm ... i don't understand ... it costs 300 yen to dry all clothes in a local loundry ... is it so expensive?

and i must be lucky cause my area is quite windy and if i hang smth it smells really nice hehe ...

I never really mind drying clothes on the roof, although once last year an attempt to do it in the dead of winter screwed up my hands for a good hour. I like the luxury of the dryer, but I often feel like the spartan-ness of Japanese life is good for me and the environment.

Drying under the rays of the sun is indispensable for the Japanese, at least for older generations. It's a matter of religious sense or long-held tradition, rather than rational hygiene, economical reasons or small house.

If everyone could afford a dryer and had the space for it, you could actually see how much it was a real "tradition" instead of an "excuse." Traditions are usually leftover behavior from a prior rational solution to a problem, and when a new solution promises better results than the older way of doing, then you see the long battle of adoption and diffusion.

You could say that - opposed to the Internet...

Watching TV is indispensible for American, at least for older generations. It's a matter of religious sense or long-held tradtional, rather than rational information collecting, economical reasons, or media literacy.

Back to planet Earth: My problem with drying sheets outside in Tokyo is that they often come back dirtier from the air and knocking into the walls of my roof. I'm sure drying sheets outside in the countryside is as glorious as a dryer sheets commercial, but I don't enjoy it here.

oh here we go ..

If everyone could afford a dryer

what country are we talking about. can we pull out some stats on money spent on kaden per capita

and had the space for it, ...

i hapened to be in bic camera yurakuchou just the other day and there's some seriously small, like super-small, dryers around. they're quite new yet had there been an interest in them or a need for them earlier surely they would have made them small enough to fit into the impossibly small showa houses just like they made everything else small enough.

you could actually see how much it was a real "tradition" instead of an "excuse."

oh, go on de-mistifying and maybe we should organize a live-aid to help the poor japanese get their indispensable white goods.

I suspect laundry dryer ubiquity is a purely American phenomenon. I've live in various apartments in various cities in Europe but I have never lived in one with a dryer, nor ever thought to get one. In winter, I hang clothes over the central heating, and in summer they dry by themselves in a couple of hours. Laundry dryers are a massive waste of energy in these energy-sensitive days.

I disagree with you. When I use the dryer my clothes have a strange and unpleasant smell, but when I dry them outside, on the terrace, they have a fresh fragrance I like. Moreover the dryer damage the fabrics. And I don't think we can escape city pollution simply closing the window: unfortunately it is even inside the house!

But I agree with H.

You know... the only place I've ever had my own dryer was at my parents house growing up. It would be weird if every apartment had a dryer (instead of a battery of them somewhere in the building), no?

Still, every apartment I've had could have fit one through the door.

I have a small balcony where I can hang very few of my clothes to dry. It's very cramped and narrow and oftentimes they comes back dirtier from hitting the walls, railing, etc. During the winter, they take forever to dry. Hanging them inside gives them this odd smell. During the rainy season, who knows when you can get clothes dry.

The idea that hanging clothes out to dry is some sort of religious tradition is ridiculous. The reason that no one buys those "seriously small" dryers is because they don't work well. Most people I know are aware of this. If you really want dry clothes, you have to shell out the cash. And lots of people aren't able to afford one. Everyone I know who can afford one either has one or wants one. No one has told me "it's against my religion to dry my clothes mechanically".

And the space issue is a real one. The fact that the presence or absence of a place to put a washing machine is listed in all apartment advertisements attests to that.

I have to second that. No dryers in Europe. Clothes can dry here without any help of electricity. (Different climate, though.)

Dryers rank up there with cars in terms of luxury and energy waste. Fortunately, neither Japan nor America were built on the premise of having dryers (unlike cars) so we could get rid of them if need be. I like the *luxury* of machine dried clothes - I miss the old common washer-dryers in my Queens apartment building - but I understand fully well why dryers are more pain than they're worth in Tokyo. We used to have one two years ago here, but my roomate sold it because he never used it. Now, he buys another one? What made him rebel against such stern Japanese cultural traditions?

i personally miss the european way of using your balcony as a place to chill out, have coffee, have breakfast, hang out with friends, chat with your neighbour, work on your suntan. In this country balconies seem to be owned by futons and clothes.

The idea that hanging clothes out to dry is some sort of religious tradition is ridiculous.

put this way yes it is ridiculous / the cynical, de-mistifying way to look at things.
looked at differently the way futons and laundry are hung in the sun, just like using waribashi, taking a bath, eating all the rice in your bowl and so forth do have religious significance. assuming shinto (oh no not back to shinto) is religion.

Agree with alin; I miss the entire european concept of housing. Of course if they built in Tokyo like in Spain houses will cost billions of yen, but still...

I don't have a balcony, and the flatmate who has is usually not home, so I have a dehumidifier in my room. It's also built to dry clothes, and workes quite well. Quite noisy though.

I don't think anyone is being self-conciously religious about not owning a dryer, using waribashi, or sleeping on a futon instead of a bed. Though all three of these are the more traditional routes, and could be rather easily attatched to shinto, they are also all "second best".

From my own experience, I wager that most city-people would rather own a dryer and sleep on a bed (everyone laughs at me for sleeping on my futon). Waribashi are not really preferable to your own chopsticks either. It's a matter of space, money, and efficiency.

This is not to say that there's no religious significance to the acts alin describes. Shintoism and tradition are largely inseperable, but upgrading and abandoning tradition are not necessarily acts of abandoning the religion.

what's the problem with waribashi?

they're wasteful and expensive. not so many people will use them at home given the choice.

One reason why Japanese homes lack certain labor-saving devices might be the fact that many of them include an unpaid housekeeper: the wife.
Or am I full of it? After all denshi renji are popular enough...

Someone once told me that, beyond space and energy issues, dishwashers haven't gone over big in Japan because the size/shape of Japanese dishes makes them hard to wash by machine. Does this sound plausible?

Anyway, forget a dryer, this time of year I miss INSULATION! Is it not Shinto to use the stuff? Japan wastes unbelievable amounts of energy every winter pumping heat into uninsulated buildings. I've heard there is some talk of better insulating buildings (anything would be an improvement) to meet Kyoto Protocol emissions reduction targets.

The very first thing I bought for my place before we moved in was a washer and a dryer. I was so damn sick of hauling everything to the coin laundry for the last 17 years. The Yodobashi intallation guys got it into the washroom just fine. Nice Sanyo over/under unit with its own rack mounting.

My complaint about dryers here is they are electric and take forever to dry anything. Note that this is only the home units, the coin laundry ones are gas. Why I have a gas spigot for a room heater but not for a dryer is beyond me.

guest: our house came with a tiny dishwasher. It works fine for all the dishes we bought here, but I suspect it was designed by a man who never washed a dish in his life. The rack spacing is all wrong for plates or bowls. As for insulation, yes that I miss. Specially going into the winter...

self-conciously religious

there's a good bit in 'Shinto, the way home' by Thomas P. Kasulis.
they were donig this questionaire asking people in japan "are you religios?" and the answer was invariably "no" so they decided to rephrase the question to "have you worshiped a fox in the last year?" the reply being almost 100% positive. shinto is a slippery one.

strict insulation is quite not good for an apartment ... sooner or later there would be mould or mushroom ...

I think you're all forgetting the most important reason Japanese houses do not have laundry dryers or insulation: Neo-Confucianism.

hehe ... funny funny ...

but such things happen in every country, i read on New Zaelend they don't use window nets against insects and prefere spraying chemicals ... apparently they have some reason behind it ... and i think garbage disposals never became popular in Europe somehow, although it's a very interesting invention ...

o oh oh life can be cruel, life in to kee oh ! o oh oh life can be cruel, life in to kyo !

Shinto is best preserved in bishoujo games like Kanon and Air. And let's not forget about the ubiquitous miko fetish....*cough*

Why houses in Edinburgh normally don't have double glazing -- in a country where low temperatures and strong winds are not unheard of -- always puzzled me. The explanation that it's because many of them are listed and have to preserve the original middle ages look never convinced me. Now I understand: it's the remainders of pagan creationalist religions that make them do it.

I can understand there be no insulation in old-style Japanese houses, but since they can't seem to destroy enough of those these days and build awful sub-modernist apartment complexes, you'd think they upgrade to insulation. My house is about 4 years old, and around noon, it's often colder inside than outside.

i used to work at an eikaiwa. a student once told me he thought the main reason most americans only used dryers was that they're afraid their clothes would get stolen if they hung them out..

I had a friend in college who used to hang out in the campus laundromat and steal panties when the room emptied out. I think he may have graduated valedictorian.

you guys think it's rough down there without insulation? They don't do it up here either.

but alin, had they asked the same people if it would have made any difference in their lives or the universe if they hadn't worshipped a fox, they probably would have said no.

by the way, a few weeks back when I asked the 2nensei about shinto, one group answered with phrases like, "we think it's stupid to believe in ghosts and gods" and "aren't you strong enough to live your life without god" in halting english. They didn't realize how ferocious they were being. It was a blast.

My theory about the insulation is that the construction industry is run by the mob and horribly corrupt. The whole idea is to fit as many houses on the smallest piece of land possible, without much regard to the quality, beauty, or permanence of the building. Lately, all the old houses in my neighborhood have been torn down, and they build at least 2 three-story, narrow houses in its place. My roomate's house is similar. Three stories sounds cool, but it can't be more than 15 ft. wide from wall to wall. How much room would insulation take up? If it's a foot, that means a lot less space in the whole house. The problem in general with the mob running everything is that they are insulated from market pressures and don't care about anything other than the bottom line.

Do other countries have trucks running around with banner saying "Liberalization of the Construction Industry?" That seems like code words for "Anti-Collusion + Yakuza" to me.

今日のオヤジ川柳：「乾燥機 暗黒街の 復讐機」

The problem in general with the mob running everything is that they are insulated from market pressures and don't care about anything other than the bottom line.

That may all be true, but there are certain legal impositions, too. In Osaka, at least, there are restrictions on the total amount of floor space a house can have relative to the size of the plot it occupies - which would explain things like the 3-storey, 15-foot-wide place you talk about.

hmmm ... i didn't find tokyo apartment buildings ugly, i mean, what do you mean by such word? ... and i was actually surprised how quiet tokyo apartments are /at least those from 1970s/, i didn't know one can live in a modern cheap place without hearing neighbours through a wall ... but maybe i was lucky or smth and i admit my experience is limited and i am used to low quality of my home country's modern apartment buildings ...

Jrim: same kinda regulations in Tokyo.

porandojin: to me they are ugly as sin. Beehives and termite hills have more beauty and function for storing lots of workers than most of the mega apartments here.

same kinda regulations in Tokyo

basically same as manhattan and pretty much rest of the world. height vs footprint ratio. height may be measured somewhat differently in different places.

by the way, a few weeks back when I asked the 2nensei about shinto, one group answered with phrases like, "we think it's stupid to believe in ghosts and gods" and "aren't you strong enough to live your life without god" in halting english. They didn't realize how ferocious they were being. It was a blast.

i get the point but reading this 19th century anthropology also comes to mind.

ugly as sin. Beehives and termite hills have more beauty

part of the issue here with many of the buildings you're describing could be that edo and before type of horizontalities and 奥, are actually stacked vertically crating a suffocating density. this is probably strongest in stuff built in the late 70s and especially 80s less so in 60s and early 70s stuff when a more international type of modernism was practiced. again there's plenty of overscaled, as koolhaas would say 'fat' architecture, gridlike overloaded both horizontaly and vertically (shiodome, shibaura etc) popping up right now but at least they are being very considerate and generous with the interiors.

What I really want to know is; what is that funky smell that clothes aquire during their balcony beauty sleep time? It is bad in Tokyo and worse in Osaka. Kind of makes the shirt unnaturally crisp and stinks up the room when I do my ironing. Also stains whites, come home looking like a chain smoker's lungs... And not to get too personal, but I know loads of outside country's people who come here for the first time and develop gross and bizzarro skin problems. Of course its a given that any big city has bad air, but I wonder; has anybody read anything concrete recently about just how unhealthy the air is?

OH MY GOD
who ever would have thought that small post would have raised such a ruckus.

HAHAH

but I was wondering though.
When I was there last spring I saw a lot of clothes hanging outside
and the girl I was with did the same.
I guess I know now.

cool man.

just how unhealthy the air is?

very very. about 2 years and it becomes terminal. then once your skin gets all the various 虫: 多虫、水虫 and so forth there is no return.

Did I get this in here?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1870754,00.html

Gotta love the international correspondent lifestyle. Where have I seen this story before...? (hint)

It also wasn't original to the Mainichi Daily News: "WaiWai stories are transcriptions of articles that originally appeared in Japanese language publications".

marxy, people are chatting about unrelated stuff while waiting for the new homework.

a (re)solution?: