Tuesday, October 4
My cousin wrote recently to say that she’s really enjoying the blog. She and her family live on the US east coast and we don’t get to see them that often. One of the best things about writing this blog for us is getting fun comments. To everyone who has commented on our posts: Thank you! It is so fun for us to hear from you. Please keep it up. And if you haven’t commented, but have thought about it, please do! Let us know that you are reading. Thank you Val and Alisa for being our most prolific commentators. We love to hear from you! Also, thank you to Michael, Mayumi and Tipton who re-posted our blog link on their Facebook pages. We’re so happy that you like it enough to share with your friends, too!
My east coast cousin said that they are eagerly awaiting my Japanese appliances post. So this one is for you. There’s a lot to say about these crazy appliances. And I’m still leaving the toilet for later because the toilet gets its own post to itself. I’m literally in the process of taking photos of public toilets so that I can have a good toilet photo collection.
The wackiest “appliances” in our house here are the “steam oven,” the washer/dryer combo machine, the bathtub, the air conditioner and the refrigerator/freezer. Coming in for honorable mention: the stove top range and the rice maker. Pretty much anything that talks to you is a wacky appliance in my opinion. And almost everything I listed talks, plays music or beeps at us. Surprisingly, the dishwasher is quite boring.
The DRYER
When we saw the online listing for this house, the one thing that I was most excited about was the washer/dryer. Specifically, the dryer. Most people probably know that folks here hang their clothes out to dry. There’s a balcony off every house and every apartment with a pole and hangers or a line and clothespins or a stand with rails. In the stores there are unbelievably huge clips that can be used to hook a futon or comforter off the balcony.
In laundry terms, I can’t think of anything worse than hanging my sheets and towels out to dry. They have zero fluffiness or softness after Mother Nature has evaporated their moisture in the sun and left them like raisins. And hanging socks and underwear is really time consuming!
The washer/dryer is one machine. This is very space efficient but the problem is, on the setting for consecutive wash and dry it takes 3.5 hours for one cycle. So, let’s say I want to wash and dry 2 loads. We’re looking at 7 HOURS! And plus I have to collect the dirty laundry on the back end and fold them later on. Often, if the load doesn’t involve sheets and towels, I say to heck with it and hang the clothes to dry just to get another load of wash through. Almost all of the buttons on the washer/dryer are in kanji (Chinese characters) which I have no hope of reading. And this machine talks but I don’t know what it’s saying. Probably something like: Alert! Your American clothes are too many and too large for this machine!
One day my neighbor Kimiko was over and I asked her for a washer/dryer tutorial. She kindly wrote notes for me! Three pages!
The “OVEN”
I put “oven” in quotes because this machine isn’t really just an oven. It’s a small box that’s the size of a very large microwave with so many functions that it’s almost impossible to do the right thing.
When you open the door to turn it on, there is a screen menu with six selections. I have asked my friend Hiroko and my cousin Mayumi to help me understand this machine. I have studied it for hours. I have discovered that this is a Bistro Steam Oven made by Panasonic and that it is super fancy, super expensive and super amazing according to every Japanese local person that enjoys cooking and knows about such things. I still have yet to look it up online which is probably the first thing I should have done.
The six onscreen buttons are:
atatame (Ah-ta-ta-may = some kind of quick heating)
ra-n-ji (Ray-n-gee = Range – that’s the microwave oven)
su-chi-mu (Sue-chi-moo = Steamer)
kanji I can’t read and then “men-nyu” (some kind of menu!)
gu-ri-ru (Goo-ri-rue = Grill)
o-bu-n (O-boo-n = Oven)
This is all good and fine except that each of those six selections, when chosen, brings up another menu of choices with more selections. And so on! Each selection brings more choices. It seems like the options never end. I’m also not very good with converting C to F and back again so I don’t have accurate temperatures heating my food.
This oven machine talks to me but, like the washer, I don’t know what it’s saying exactly. In my imagination it’s saying things like: your food has burned, your food is still cold because you pushed the wrong button, put water in the steamer or you’ll be sorry, your food is dehydrating. Under the atatame selection, there’s a choice for rice. I think rice actually has its very own quick heating button. No other food gets this kind of special attention.
Because this is an all-in-one machine I was having trouble making the transition between functions. So one day I put potatoes in the oven on a metal tray with aluminum foil under them. I chose the oven selection to bake them but they were taking too long so I decided to switch over and quick zap them with the microwave selection. I was surprised when inside the machine things started to pop and spark! Yikes! Metal and foil are not allowed in the microwave. Yet, just seconds earlier it was fine in the oven setting. Shoot.
The BATHTUB (also known as Ofuro in Japanese)
I already went over the tub in the “Our Japanese House” blog post, but I feel the need to reiterate the fact that when you fill the tub with water it talks to you! You get a five minute notice letting you know how long till the tub is full and hot. Five minutes later, when the tub is ready, it plays a selection from Pachelbel’s Canon in D and then talks to you again. John loves this!
This is the panel outside of the ofuro door. The ofuro room also functions as a huge dryer. When the weather is bad I can dry my clothes in here. You can see in the photo below that there is a bar to hang your clothes. I’m sure there are big clips for this too. One of the buttons on this panel is a heating function and the whole room heats up to dry clothes. I haven’t tried it yet. But I’m told it sucks up a lot of energy.
Another interesting thing is that there is a button on the tub panel (at right) that has an automatic rinsing feature. The tub will fill a little way and then drain out before it fills for real. This allows the tub to get washed out first before filling. Clever!
You take a shower to clean yourself while the tub is filling up. You cannot, according to strict Japanese law, get into the tub dirty. That would be super uncool. So the five minute notice is handy. It’s time to wrap up the shower when you hear the voice talking and you should be finished by the time you hear Canon in D.
The digital tub panel is connected to the hot water panel in the kitchen (at left). You have to turn the hot water on and off when you want to use it. So whenever the tub talks, it also broadcasts in the kitchen. The hot water button will also talk to you when you change the temperature setting so I always know when Halyard is messing with the temp.
The AIR CONDITIONER
The air conditioner is a critical appliance and again, unfortunately all in kanji so we can’t read it. The units are all up high so we have to study the remote control buttons. The air conditioner is one of those things where, when you are melting into the floor from record setting heat and humidity, you feel like you need relief immediately. When you are a kid especially, that means pushing every button on the remote until something that you like happens. (See how many buttons this thing has below. Two panels!)
Consequently, we have pushed the buttons on our air con remote into slumber on several occasions. One time we had the timer on so who knows when the thing was actually going to turn on. Another time we could hear that it was running but it felt like warm, sticky air was coming out. Our neighbor took a look at our unit and determined that we had set it on cleaning mode.
Each of our bedrooms has an air con unit too so we’ve had the same issues in some of the bedrooms. At one point, Halyard had to ask a friend to help him set his unit back on track. There’s an economy setting on each unit and I’m trying to get the kids to understand that it doesn’t have to feel like the Arctic in their rooms. Sadly, the air conditioners don’t talk though.
The REST
Here’s a light panel in the house. All of the light panels look like this, with more or less buttons. We just have to push everything and see what happens! Sometimes it doesn’t look like it is doing anything until it’s nighttime and we see a glowing light. Then we have to figure out which switch the light went with.
The refrigerator/freezer is awesome. I love it. I want this exact thing at home. It’s not that much different from American refrigerators actually, but I like how the thing beeps when you’ve left the door or drawer open. And the ice maker is a small drawer with a little ice scoop inside. There is a water container that you fill and insert into the refrigerator that is used by the ice maker.
There are some buttons on the outside of the refrigerator door but I’m not quite sure what they do. My friend said they speed up some of the functions, like faster ice or faster cooling, but so far I don’t see any such results from pushing those buttons. The very top light which is glowing green in the photo is actually a mini layout of the refrigerator/freezer. It shows which area of the appliance you are affecting when you push the buttons. Again, I don’t see anything going on when I push anything. Avalon loves that the refrigerator doors are operated by super strong spring hinges. When you open the doors by the slight push of a button, the doors totally pop out with force at you.
The stove top is gas, which I’m thrilled about. The heat is super high and I’m not sure why but it’s much hotter than my gas stove top at home. This heats up my pots and pans in an instant, even on low setting. If you leave the switch for the burner on for too long the appliance beeps at you every few minutes. At first I couldn’t figure out where the incessant beeping was coming from. Finally I realized that I hadn’t properly shut off the burner ignition. The panel between the switches is a mini grill. I think it’s often used for fish.
The rice maker is typical. Thank goodness because it’s also in kanji so I’ve had to guess at what some of the buttons do. It also plays music! But I’m not sure why. I’m assuming that it is telling me that the rice is ready. This rice maker has a timer setting – wish I could figure that out – and a fast cook setting for when you are in a hurry and you need your rice NOW! And who doesn’t need their rice immediately? Isn’t that why Minute Rice was invented?
John says when we go back home and the appliances stop talking to him he’s going to be so lonely.
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