I have just figured out my washing machine. To anyone who has never known the joy of living in a Japanese apartment, I assure you this is no trite victory. Something I love about living here, one of the things that has lured me back for a second year, is the ecstasy of accomplishment I get on a daily basis, something that I haven`t really enjoyed since the age of 8, when I finally mastered my bike sans training wheels. Every time a soda in a vending machine responds correctly to one of the strange shiny coins I`ve learned to produce, I want a parade. Sometimes I find myself doing something ordinary, and then looking around to see if anyone has been watching, and is suitably impressed. Maybe they will come up and bowingly compliment my extraordinary skill. So far, not even once. But I know, and I am proud.

So the washing machine. A Japanese washing machine is a strange conundrum. In a country where self-warming toilet seats and remote control air conditioners live peacefully in the same apartment as tatami mats and an oil-burning heater (*sniff* do I smell whale?), the Japanese washing machine is a half-manual, half-electric puzzle. Like the bionic man. Like one of those old washboards my Great-Grandmother used had a freak accident and had to be rushed to a top-secret lab to be refitted with robotic limbs, but inside still beats the heart of a good old-fashioned washboard.

It`s a compact plastic rectangular box with two adjacent narrow buckets sunk inside. Studying it, you assume there must be controls to plug or let out the stopper, fill the bucket with water, make the bucket spin around, and then make the other bucket spin around really fast to whip the water out before you hang all your clean wet clothes on your balcony to dry because you`re living in an insane country that knows no dryer. Matching these abstract washing goals to the controls that will realize them however, is another matter. It`s a word match, only one half the words are only in your head, and the other half are written in strange scribbles. I`ve gained enormous respect for illiterates while living in Japan, it`s not an easy road. Twist this knob to stop the drain? No, that makes an airplane noise. Pull this knob out a bit to agitate? Wrong, that makes the lint trap fall off. Where`s the thing to fill it with water? Oh, right, that would be this garden hose. Where`s the hidden camera broadcasting all this to the public?

I`m thankful actually, for the lack of a dryer. Clothes pins and air I can figure out.