Laundry day!

When you live in a tropical environment, your clothes get "unclean" rapidly (damp, sweaty, musty, etc).....and, of course, being a girl, wearing cleaning clothes as opposed to those passing the sniff test is important.  One of the amenities offered by my housing is the inclusion of a clothes washer and dryer in the unit.

Of course, they are a Japanese washer and dryer.

Yes, that means the instructions are all in Japanese. 

The building managers have done their best to help and the washing machine has helpful markers to indicate which buttons to push and in what sequence.

Washing machine with instructions - push 1, then 2, followed by 3 and 4.....I have NO idea what the buttons cause the machine to do but it started and did what washing machines are supposed to do....

I carefully sorted my clothes, loaded the first batch into the machine and pushed the buttons.....the machine began a process of agitating the clothes with quick, intermittent pulses.....then it stopped and blinked at me to let me know how much laundry detergent to add.  Best I can figure, the agitation was to measure the weight of the clothing to correctly (the the 1/16 of a cup) measure the correct amount of laundry soap.  I added soap then the machine took off.......it went through a series of cycles, adding small amounts of water, agitating the clothes, more water, spinning off and on.  The entire process takes about 35 minutes - and the final spin cycle felt like it was NEVER going to stop.....my clothes were practically dry when I pulled them from the washer.  Best I can figure, by measuring the weight of the laundry before washing, the machine has precisely calibrated the EXACT amount of water and spin time necessary to clean the clothes yet still conserve energy?  I don't need to know how it worked...I just know I had clean ( but wet) clothes.....

Now, on to the dryer.....

There are no helpful "push this button" first instructions for the dryer...I was on my own with this one!

The dryer is mounted on the wall and had no helpful directions included.  Nothing but instructions in Japanese and a wide array of choices........hmmm...... I loaded my clothes and began a process of randomly pushing buttons.  I managed to get the machine started, and after the first 3-4 minutes, opened the door...just to check.  Hmmmm....OK, need to push a few more buttons because, although the dryer was working, the clothes were not warm at all.  Must have hit the "fluff" cycle.  Pushed some more buttons....waited a few minutes....pushed some more buttons.....I finally succeeded in getting the dryer to heat the clothes so they would actually dry.  After 15 minutes or so, I checked them and found they were dry - due to the fact that the washing machine had done half the job already!  I pulled the clothes out and shut the dryer door.  It started again.  I opened the door, closed the door...and it started.  I said "the heck with it" and left the door open while I folded the clean dry clothing.

the dryer BEEPED angrily at me!

It was apparently offended at the idea of me removing the clothes before it was done doing its "dryer" thing......Once again I randomly punched buttons until its lights flicked out.

You know that movie "Transformers".......yep, it was filmed here, I know it!  I understand better why most of the houses here have patio clothes lines....its just a lot easier and the clothes don't talk back to you!