Day 8 Housewife In Japan

Welcome back to real life. We've eaten all the groceries and my husband has run out of pants, underwear, and socks. What's a housewife to do? Inquire about laundry service of course! Well, even if Uncle George will pay for it (aka E can expense it), it would be well over $100 to get 3 pairs of pants, 6 pairs of socks, and 6 pairs of boxers laundered! Also, my shorts grew in the heat and humidity of Sunday and desperately needed to be washed and dried so they'd shrink back to their normal size. The hotel offers dry cleaning, so they wouldn't shrink back. So after much searching on Google, searching on Google Maps for a coin laundry, reading expat blogs, and trying not to rip my hair out I found something that may or may not have been a laundromat!

Here's how helpful the Google was. This is literally the extent of helpful information on the internet for coin laundry in Yokohama:

* Laundarettes are located in/near residential areas. Usually, there's one next to a sento, so look for the tall, skinny chimney of a sento, and you'll find one.

* You can find shops facilitating automated washers in the town (Coin-laundry, 
in Japanese). Public bath houses provide such facilities next to the entrance 
of bath house. 

* and then this super helpful picture and caption from 2007 from a shared housing website!

ENVIRONMENT 1F and coin-operated laundry in front of the share residence eyes. (Photo: 2007-07-19)

I figured the worst that could happen was finding food for lunch and taking a 2 mile walk through the city with some dirty laundry on my back. So I gathered as much dirty clothes that I could fit in my backpack, and set off on my laundry/grocery store adventure. Much to my surprise, it wasn't that hard to find! Here's what it looks like in real life:

For the record this was not at all near a bath house or a tall, skinny chimney. It was indeed residential though.

The neighborhood. The coin laundry was about 3 blocks beyond the tall white buiding.

So while I was doing laundry I met a man and his 2 kids who are from Malaysia and big Steeler fans.

Then I got flashed by an elderly Japanese woman. We were gesturing about how hot is was, then next thing I knew her boobies were out! Her husband thought it was hysterical, Malaysia man not so much. Don't really know what that was all about. She was talking to me like I understood her rapid fire Japanese. I went with my standard motto of "smile and nod."

After doing laundry in the tiny, un-airconditioned box of a laundromat and walking the 2-ish miles back to the hotel I was sweaty and hot as hell. So I stopped for a popsicle! It was pina colada flavored, and had real booze in it! And it had flower petals too, but those were weird.

Doing my own laundry cost a grand total of 500 yen, or about $4. You're welcome Uncle George for me saving you $96! I think you should buy me this popsicle.

I also picked up some snacks to try later. I think these are Red Chili Crisps and this looks like mint chocolate Kit-Kat bites.

Dinner tonight was a Japanese dish called okonomiyaki. It's kinda like a savory pancake? But really only in the fact that it's round and made with a batter. Okonomi means what you like and yaki means grilled. So basically you pick what you want, mix it together, then grill it. The base is some noodles, cabbage, egg, and batter. I chose to add pork, green onions, and a poached egg to mine. E went the seafood route and added squid and shrimp to his. After you grill them, you add a sweet almost teriyaki-like sauce and some Japanese mayo (has a totally different taste and consistency than American mayo). They were really yummy and I was very grateful to our waitress who helped us mix our ingredients and cook them because we had no idea what we were doing!

E's seafood okonomiyaki

My pork and scallion (which was labeled Welsh onion on the menu) okonomiyaki

After dinner we were both really in the mood for some beer, and I wanted chocolate. So we grabbed some local offerings. Sapporo is brewed up north in Hokkaido, but Kirin is brewed here in Yokohama!