Laundry SUCCEED

This morning when I went down to breakfast, after having looked up a few key words in the dictionary, I explained to the manager my laundry situation. She expressed surprise that there was any problem. We went into the laundry room together, she turned on the machine, and sure enough, there was the blinking "C6" filter error.

Now, when I got this error the previous evening, I did try hitting every button on the control panel just to see if one of them would make it go away. But I didn't hit the big "START" button in the middle, since I wasn't ready to actually start my laundry until I'd chosen my settings. Silly me. Completely ignoring the error, the manager hit the "START" button, then looked at me as if I were an idiot, which I suppose I am. (Hat tip to John for his comment on yesterday's post.)

The panel lit up, ready to serve.

I went in to eat breakfast, which had already been laid out for me, planning to do laundry afterwards.

One of the little dishes today was fried chicken balls, but whether that's called yakitori or toriyaki, or something else entirely, I have no idea.

Also, today's cabbage was a different kind, more green, less white.

The manager showed me and the disheveled-looking graduate student eating with me the pictures she's surreptitiously taken of us over the last few days.  I took the opportunity to ask her to take a picture of me using my camera, so you can see what the guesthouse dining room looks like.

The reason I have two teacups is that, continuing in her efforts to make me consume as many different foods in as great a quantity as possible, today she gave me a sour-plum (うめ) flavored tea to try along with the regular green tea.

She's equally fussy with the Japanese guests, offering them candy and cookies, telling them about the fresh, high-quality ingredients she's used and inviting them to say how delicious it all is.  She's quite sweet, really.

So after breakfast I rounded up my laundry and went downstairs and turned on the machine.  This time, no "C6" error at all.  The panel lit up instantly and emitted some cheerful electronic chimes.

I selected "wash-then-dry", and the display panel showed me a total time of over 3 hours. Three hours! Then I recalled, this is also just like Korea. These washer-dryer combos take forever to dry clothes; it's usually better to just air-dry them. In any case, I didn't have 3 hours to wait around, I had to go into the office. So I selected "wash only", and set the water level on the left to 35 liters (as my little sachet of laundry powder had directed).

(You can see pictures of the washer-dryer laundry machines in my Korean apartments here and here.  Both were in the kitchen.)

48 minutes, that's better.

After I'd showered, dressed, and checked my email, the laundry was done.  I laid out half of it on the absurdly tiny drying rack provided in the room, and set that in front of the air-conditioner to speed drying. I laid the rest of my clothes over chair arms and backs. I figure if it's still wet this evening, I can throw it into the machine for an hour or so.

Every day's an adventure!

Laundry FAIL

Time to do laundry.  There is a machine in one of the rooms on the first floor of the guest house.  After I got home from dinner tonight (at a punfully named place called 醉磨銭:地物枝豆、ぬか漬盛合、和牛すじ煮込み、山芋オムレツ、エノキ豚肉巻、焼うどん), I walked over to the local convenience store to look for laundry detergent.  I found this tiny little box with five rip-open 20-gram packets in it, perfect for doing laundry while traveling.

Each packet cleans 1.5 kg of clothing in 30 liters of water.  But how am I supposed to know how much of my clothing weighs 1.5 kg?

Look on the back of the box!

Lessee, towels are 70 grams, "trainers" are 500 grams, "trunks" are 50 grams, socks are 50 grams a pair, button-down shirts and blouses are 200 grams, pajama top-and-bottoms are 500 grams, and "suits" (just the pants?) are 500 grams.

So, I counted out 1.5 kg' worth of socks, underwear, and T-shirts, put 'em in the little laundry basket in my room, and carried them down along with a sachet of laundry powder.

I walked over to the washing machine.  (Click through for a bigger image.)

Okay, okay, don't panic, deep breaths, you can figure this out.  Almost everything's either in Chinese characters or is English borrowing written in katakana.  So: on/off button on the right.  "START" button in the middle.  Okay.  Turn the machine on.

First thing on the left: liters of water.  That's good, I'm supposed to use 30 liters.  Then: washing time in minutes, the next one is ... umm ... probably number of rinse cycles, then water drainage spin time, then drying time.  Hey, this thing is a dryer too!  Cool!  Next button looks like it's for programming it to start running later on, don't need that.

The three big buttons on the right: choose wash, wash-then-dry, or dry only.  Okay, that's good.  The last two buttons, hmm, maybe some sort of pre-programmed sequences, I can ignore those maybe.

Yes!  I can do this!

Wait a minute -- what's that big C6 doing blinking on and off on the center panel?  And blinking on and off with it (but not visible in the picture) is "フィルタ".  That must be "filter".  Hmm.  There's a filter somewhere that needs clearing out.

Okay, let's see, hmm, what's all this on the top door of the washing machine?

Scanning, scanning for "フィルタ".  There it is, on the lower right!  Hmm, that's for filters inside the drain hose.  Hardly seems likely that there's a sensor for that.  Gotta be something else.

Open the lid, and hey, there's another lid under it!

Ah-ha!  Inside, that pink thing on the left, labeled "フィルタ A"!  It's a lint filter.  I'll just clean that out -- oh, hey, there's a Filter B under it, I'll clean that out too, reinsert both, and voilà, the blinking light will ...

... stay blinking.  Darn.

Okay, lessee, there's another sign here on the inner lid:

I recognize the drawings of my two filters.  Okay, um, says something about cleaning out Filters A and B.  I did that already.  Then let's see, the second red box says, um:

In the case where you insert filter A and B and the filter warning (?) is still lit and "C6 error" is happening, then ... um ... take out the filter and something something something there's a possibility that something or other.  Please stick in the attached "suikomi nozzle".

What the heck is suikomi?  According to the diagram, it looks like a little vacuum cleaner hose is shoved into the back right of the filter cabinet there.  Maybe something's blocked back there.  I don't see the suikomi nozzle anywhere, but I'll just stick my fingers back in there and ...

... ugh, pull out all this gross wet matted mildewy lint.  No doubt that was the problem!

Okay, put the filters back, close everything up, turn the machine off and on again, and ...

Damn!

That's it, I'm out of ideas.  I'll have to try to talk to the manager when she gets back in the morning.  In the meantime, instead of doing laundry, I'll post something else on the blog.