How not to do washing in Japan

We’ve run out of ‘smalls’ so decide to make use of the laundry facilities in the hotel. Easier said than done. For some reason there is a male and female laundry??? Anyway, we just went to the male one and chose a machine which we found out washes and dries. Brilliant. If one knows how to work it that is. Shove the clothes in. Close the door. And now for the tricky bit. Nothing, except the start button is in English (or course). We press all the buttons, sometimes at once, and after some time the water starts pumping in and the clothes are swishing as they should. Wonderful! Off to dinner we go. On our return, PC goes to get the washing and comes back and says, they are still damp. So we take them down to ‘dry only’ with more change (we’ve spend about 500 yen thus far) to give them another hit in the dryer. Figure out the ‘dry only’ button and give it a whirl. Next thing, the washer kicks in and off we go again, with the swishing thing. On the bright side, they’ll be the cleanest smalls in the world at this rate. PC is becoming frustrated, so we just leave them in the machine and figure we’ll grab them in the morning. During all this, Paul has had to walk up the stairs between floors for the two days because for some reason his keycard isn’t co-operating; or, wait enormous amounts of time for one of the two lifts to be available (without being totally jammed packed with business men in black suits). Finally, he goes to get the clothes and the door won’t open. Apparently, when we pressed all those buttons, we actually set up a pin code (for security purposes, so other guests don’t pinch your undies). But because we pressed so many, we have no way of knowing what the pin number is! Paul, once again goes to reception and once again a helpful staff member comes up to help with the washing thing. Except they couldn’t get the door open either so then had to call the handyman to come and move the machine out from the wall and get in behind it to do something, which allowed the door to open. Great! Except they were as wet as wet can be. More money in, more ‘let’s go having something to eat’ and more, on our return, still wet clothes. At least this time they are not dripping wet, just really damp. Which was fine, except Paul has no T-shirts to wear on the train to Kyoto, and I have no undies at all. Which is how I ended up travelling to Kyoto by train wearing a pair of PC’s undies. And he in a long sleeve ‘granny shirt’ more suitable for bed. With a huge bag of still wet washing, unceremoniously dumped at the laundry mat around the corner for a ‘dry only’ please. Total cost of washing is now more than most of the clothes are worth. Ho. Hum.Read more