Today's Picture: 052
Mar. 19th, 2009 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanIs of:
my washing machine, because although Japan enjoys an image as the Kewl Technology and Gadgetry Capital of the Universe, a good deal of their technology is really, really dumb.
Such as said washer. Apologies for the weird isometric angle, but I wanted to get all of the reaons why this thing sucks into a single photo. As you can see, the washer sits in a little plastic tub and drains through a hole into the floor, which by necessity must be large enough to accomodate a large variety of washer makes, meaning that the hole is not sealed terribly tightly and thus becomes a conduit by which sewer gases (and occassionaly cockroaches) can enter the apartment.
The Japanese do not use dryers, so all laundry is air-dried outdoors. This is excellent during the summer months when it results in that delicious dried-in-the-sun smell that no dryer sheet or detergent has ever come close to simulating. It is less excellent in the six to eight months out of the year when the country is damp and cold, when clothing takes 10-20 hours to dry outside...if it can be hung up to dry outside.
Another sucky aspect to Japanese washing machines is that the basket is just that--a basket. No central pillar or stabilisation system. And both the agitation and water spin-out cycles can only be described as violent. This tends to stretch anklets into knee socks and tear the hemming out of even the most sturdily constructed clothing (which most of the stuff coming out China these days is not).
It also makes the machines retardedly easy to overbalance, no matter how over- or underloaded they are. It is not possible (at least with any of the four washers I have owned) to stop the cycle, manually readjust the load, and start it back up on dry. The washers instead to correct overbalancing by repeating the rinse cycle; resulting in what should be a twenty minute load of two shirts and a pillowcase stretching into two and a half hours as the rinse cycle repeats and repeats until the load is finally distributed evenly enough to initiate the spinout.
Laundry is most definitely one of the areas where I dearly wish I could take my American tech into the country with me.
That will be all.
my washing machine, because although Japan enjoys an image as the Kewl Technology and Gadgetry Capital of the Universe, a good deal of their technology is really, really dumb.
Such as said washer. Apologies for the weird isometric angle, but I wanted to get all of the reaons why this thing sucks into a single photo. As you can see, the washer sits in a little plastic tub and drains through a hole into the floor, which by necessity must be large enough to accomodate a large variety of washer makes, meaning that the hole is not sealed terribly tightly and thus becomes a conduit by which sewer gases (and occassionaly cockroaches) can enter the apartment.
The Japanese do not use dryers, so all laundry is air-dried outdoors. This is excellent during the summer months when it results in that delicious dried-in-the-sun smell that no dryer sheet or detergent has ever come close to simulating. It is less excellent in the six to eight months out of the year when the country is damp and cold, when clothing takes 10-20 hours to dry outside...if it can be hung up to dry outside.
Another sucky aspect to Japanese washing machines is that the basket is just that--a basket. No central pillar or stabilisation system. And both the agitation and water spin-out cycles can only be described as violent. This tends to stretch anklets into knee socks and tear the hemming out of even the most sturdily constructed clothing (which most of the stuff coming out China these days is not).
It also makes the machines retardedly easy to overbalance, no matter how over- or underloaded they are. It is not possible (at least with any of the four washers I have owned) to stop the cycle, manually readjust the load, and start it back up on dry. The washers instead to correct overbalancing by repeating the rinse cycle; resulting in what should be a twenty minute load of two shirts and a pillowcase stretching into two and a half hours as the rinse cycle repeats and repeats until the load is finally distributed evenly enough to initiate the spinout.
Laundry is most definitely one of the areas where I dearly wish I could take my American tech into the country with me.
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2009-03-19 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-03-20 02:10 am (UTC)The environmentalist in you should begin bracing now. You have been warned.
no subject
on 2009-03-21 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-03-21 02:05 am (UTC)Chief among these projects are turning all the rivers and streams in the country into cement tubes. I am really, really not joking here. Needless to say, this has destroyed countless river ecosystems. I recall hearing something to the effect that there are only two rivers in the country with their natural riverbeds intact. This statistic is probably apocryphal, but the fact that I'm unwilling to dismiss it out of hand should give you an idea of how pervasive the problem is.
no subject
on 2009-03-21 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-03-21 02:10 pm (UTC)