Installing a Washing Machine

So as part of getting a new apartment I purchased a used washing machine so that I don't need to worry about going to a coin operated laundry. So you might think that I had to do some fun plumbing similar to what is shown on the left.

Far from it. The plumbing for adding a washing machines to an apartment is surprisingly easy. In my case it was just two water connections.

As can be seen below.


The water supply.

The waste water.



So as you can see from the pictures water supply comes directly from the tap on the sink with an adapter on the end of the tap for the hose to attach to.

For the waste water, I take out the gray waste water tube for the sink and insert the white tube for the washing machine. Beneath the bottom of the cabinet for the sink there is a pipe that comes out of the floor which I assume goes to the septic system. So obviously I can't use the sink while I am doing laundry.

What is interesting for this entire installation all I needed was a Philips head (called a plus driver in Japan) driver and a knife.

I just wanted to post this so people can get a little contrast for typical plumbing that they are use to.

Please feel free to comment.

Hanami (Cherry Blossoms)

First off I should say this that hanami are in bloom in April and May. So this post is a bit late. To compound things the text was written on my flight back from Singapore. It has been waiting for me to put together the photos that I wanted so I finally decided to sit down and do it. Think of this as an incentive to come out to Japan and see the hanami next year.

I know this is very similar to one blog post that I have already done but there are always so many good photos (If they are not any good, don't tell me :) ) that it is hard to resist putting them up. So here are a few of my favorite shots from this year. I also went to the botanical garden close to my apartment this year and caught those flowers in bloom.

New apartment

Well I don't have much of an excuse for not posting much lately its just that I have been kind of busy.

From the title you can see that I have a new apartment now. So, I have been doing the moving type stuff lately.

The apartment that I moved to is probably a little bit more of a normal Japanese apartment, if not in style at least in size and layout. It is just your basic bachelor pad. It has its own kitchenette and bathroom. The other nice feature is that there is a loft above the kitchenette/bathroom. I have put my bed up there to free up space in the main room. Trust me there is still not a lot of space in the apartment.

There are several nice features of moving out of my old apartment. One is that I will not forget to bring ingredients to the kitchen when I am cooking. My old apartment had been in a pseudo dormitory, so that meant that it had a separate shared kitchen for each floor but I had my own refrigerator in my room. This meant that when I went to make scrambled eggs I would bring most of the ingredients from my room to the kitchen. This would include,

• Eggs
• 10 yen for the range
• Milk
• Bread
• Cheese
• Onion
• Margin
• Orange Juice

After scrambling the eggs I would but them on toasted bread with the cheese. The OJ was for drinking with the sandwich. Almost every week I would forget one of those ingredients (I don't care to admit to the number of times it was the eggs). So with the kitchen and fridge right there I don't need to worry about forgetting any of the ingredients (Well except maybe going to the store to pick something up).

A couple of nice things are, I am closer to the lab. This move will cut 5 to 10 minutes off my trip in every morning. Also any friends or family can now come and stay at my place if they come to Japan. At the dormitory they did not want people staying overnight.

However, the quality of the view out my window has gone down significantly. At the dormitory I had,
or .

However at the new place this is the view.


If you can't tell that is a brick wall. The change of going from the third floor to the first floor is pretty significant.

I will try to do a better job of keeping this updated.
Andrew