The Time I Did Laundry in a Japan

My wife and I spent half of our two-week trip to Japan in Shibuya this past May. I was the one who did most of the planning and, consequently, most of the worrying. Incredibly, all of our plans went very smoothly, and even when they didn't, we quickly found alternatives.

One of my biggest worries before the trip was concerning laundry. Even with our enormous laundry machines at home, it's still a bit of a chore every week, and I imagined that we'd be going through clothes even faster in Japan with all the walking we'd be doing. That's why when I booked our hotel, I made sure that they had laundry machines available on-site.

Even knowing that the amenity was available, I was dreading having to deal with it. On Wednesday, I began to mentally prepare myself for the task by taking the smallest step possible toward its completion: I asked the employee at the front desk where the laundry machines were. They were on floors 8, 9, and 10. Cool. With that accomplished, I felt I had earned myself a break for the day.

On Thursday, my wife came down with a pretty nasty cold and spent most of the day in bed while I explored some local sites. She was still in and out of sleep when evening came, and I figured this was the best chance I’d get to wash our clothes.

I gathered the dirty clothes in a big black trash bag and went down to scope out the situation on the 8^th floor. I was easily able to find the laundry room at the end of the hall near the elevators. It contained a vending machine, coin machine, and small, old, coin-operated dryer on top of a small, old, coin-operated washer. The standing space was just slightly roomier than a porta-potty. And these three such laundry rooms were shared between some dozen floors of guests? I felt fortunate to find one that wasn’t in use.

It cost 400 yen per wash and 200 yen per half hour of drying, but these were small machines with low power output, so it would take a while for large loads, and the dryer barely dried jeans at all.

To the side was a note which said that detergent could be purchased at the front desk.

So down I went to the front desk. The people at the desk were all busy with other guests, so another employee asked if they could help me. In English, I said I was looking for laundry detergent. (I didn’t know what "detergent" was in Japanese.) I could see the man's gears turning hard, interpreting my English. He didn't know the meaning of the English word "detergent", and I could see him trying to fill in the blank of "laundry ____" with some familiar word. Like a slot machine, I imagined his brain stopping on a word and filling in the blank with... not "detergent".

Confidently, he explained to the now available woman at the front desk what I needed. She seemed a bit confused about whether I had actually paid for the laundry service, which had me worried since I thought it was free. She asked what my room number was, and I could not remember at all. "Uh... 512 maybe?", I guessed.

She smiled and replied, "We don't have a 512. Let's check your room key."

The main lobby, where I was currently, was the 5^th floor and my room was on floor 19. I hoped she wasn’t questioning whether I was really staying there at all.

She looked me up on the computer, but this only brought on more confusion with the revelation that I did not, in fact, have laundry service.

She asked if I could explain the situation again to her, so I explained from the start, as if stating my case to a judge. "Yesterday, I asked at the front desk about laundry. They said it was on floors 8, 9, and 10. Today I went to do the laundry, and the note said to come to the front desk for laundry detergent, so here I am."

The woman’s face brightened with understanding. “Wait, so you just want laundry detergent?” she confirmed and turned to the other guy to tell him in Japanese that I just wanted laundry detergent. He was all “oops. lol.” And we laughed.

So, we went over to the side to get a single use pack of laundry detergent for 100 yen. Cool. But I won't have enough coins or small bills to get coins for the laundry machines after this, so I asked if they could split my 5,000 yen bill for 1,000's.

"Sure, one moment!"

Uh-oh, the lockbox doesn't have enough 1,000 yen bills, so the guy from the beginning will have to get more from the front desk.

It seemed that even at the front desk there still might not be enough bills, but by now the bilingual woman was here to help. The man explained that he was trying to split my 5,000 and it was at that point I offered that I had 800 yen in coins, if that was any help. They both gave an enthusiastic "Oh, yes! Thank you!" But this turned the situation into a complex bit of elementary school arithmetic that was far beyond any of us. How could we possibly buy a 100 yen detergent and split the 5,000 with our limited resources?

Eventually, they came up with the solution, I took their word for it and left with my detergent and money.

At last, I returned to my room, got the bag of laundry, and headed down for one of the three tiny laundry rooms. I wasn't there long when I was startled by someone opening the door behind me.

"Crap!” I thought, “They saw me overfilling the washer and I'm in trouble!”

I turned around to see the woman from the front desk. I put on my best poker face and hoped my body was blocking her view of the overfilled washer. Maybe, I thought, I can pretend that I couldn’t read the instructions. I could also pretend I’m an idiot and didn’t notice the pictures and “4.5 kg” written in large, bold font (whatever could that be referring to?).

"I'm glad I found you,” she said. “I think we owe you another 500 yen. Here you go!"

I was doubtful that they really did owe me any more, but she insisted that they had figured it out and had accidentally short-changed me. I took her word for it and graciously accepted the money.

Later, I returned to move the wet clothes to the dryer. "There's no way this is going to dry," I thought, as I crammed in all the laundry, once again ignoring the weight limit. Suddenly, I was startled from behind again!

"Shoot, someone caught me overfilling the dryer!" I thought.

Again, it was the woman from the front desk.

"It's lucky I found you!"

“No kidding!”

"I think we actually owe you another 500 yen!"

“What?! No way!”

"Yeah, really!"

“Are you sure??”

"Yes, take it!"

“...okay...? I know you don't tip in Japan, but I feel like I should just give it to you as a tip at this point...”

"Hahaha. No, please take it."

“ok.”

 

One hour later, it was getting late, my wife was in a half-awake nose-blowing stupor, and the laundry was still wet, as expected.

I put the wet stuff back in to dry for another hour, set an alarm, got a little sleep, and finally had one load of clean clothes. I didn’t tell my wife that I didn't bother to get detergent for the second load.