Apr 4

Surviving In Japan: How to Find Out How Fast Your Laundry Will Dry

Advice, Blogs, Japan Local, Uncategorized, Writers Comments Off on Surviving In Japan: How to Find Out How Fast Your Laundry Will Dry

Ashley Thompson is "Surviving in Japan: without much Japanese"

Posted by Ashley Thompson (Shizuoka-ken, 2008-2010) of Surviving in Japan: without much Japanese and Lifelines columnist for The Japan Times.

You probably already know that most people in Japan hang out their laundry to dry. Drive or ride past apartment buildings on a sunny day and you’ll see clothes, towels, blankets and futons hanging from bars and draped over the rail. And what could be better than to have the sun dry and naturally remove odors and stains from your items? It’s a wonderful thing. Well, at least when you don’t have the strong winter wind like here in Shizuoka attempting to throw your stuff over the ledge (I’ve gotten quite clever at coming up with ways to keep things from blowing off the balcony).

And you probably also know that you wouldn’t hang clothes outside if it’s raining or looks like it’s going to rain.

But what if you could know how fast your clothes might dry on any given day?

There’s a neat tool on various weather websites that determines a “laundry index” or 洗濯指数 (せんたくしすう, sentaku shisuu) – essentially it tells you if it’s a good day for hanging out laundry or not and how quickly certain items will dry.

For this example I’m going to use tenki.jp, though you can find the laundry index on Yahoo and other sites as well (and they are all the same so I can’t say one is better than another).

First, go to tenki.jp, and then click on 指数情報 (しすうじょうほう, shisuu jouhou – sort of like “index information”), as in the picture below. (There’s actually a map of Japan in that blank gray box but it didn’t show up in my screenshot for some reason.)

Next, choose 洗濯 (せんたく, sentaku, laundry). — CLICK HERE to read the rest of the post.