Part 1: Japanese Weather Forecast

In Japan, the weather forecast is notoriously accurate. That's a nice facet of living here. You can count on the TV weather forecaster to be competent and correct. There are also some nice weather sites such as Japan Meteorological Agency's and Tenki.jp.

It was a constant disappointment living in the States when you'd watch the TV forecast and get the weather for Chicago or L.A., for example, which would inevitably be significantly different from where you actually lived. Because you are in their TV market area, however, you are left guessing just how different your personal experience will be.

A really excellent feature of these forecasts is the sentaku (laundry) forecast. In case you were unaware, in Japan almost everyone dries their laundry outside on plastic clip hangars suspended from a pole on the veranda. This goes for both apartments/condos (or "manshyon", which are not the mansions we think of in American English, but that that's another post entirely) and private residences. The plastic hanging devices have one or two larger sized hooks to suspend them from the pole (commonly a long aluminum pole suspended horizontally by hooks mounted to the overhang of your balcony/veranda), then small alligator clips to connect various pieces of laundry. The whole laundry hangar folds in half to save space during storage, as well.

The laundry forecast will tell you how good the weather will be that day for hanging and drying laundry. It really pays off if you put some out and have to leave home. You can figure out ahead of time whether or not this will be a good idea or rather if it will likely rain or be so windy you'll loose your skid marked tighty-whities when they are blown into the neighbor's veranda.

Laundry drying outside was one of the first things I noticed here as most residential buildings were covered in laundry on nice weather days. In America, when one travels somewhere, whether it's rural or downtown, and sees laundry outside, the typical first impression is that the area is not very affluent. Here, it is pervasive and generally has nothing to do with income levels. Sometimes in the winter when it's particularly dry, we hang our laundry inside to help humidify the air in our apartment.

I have begun to notice that I'm becoming slowly inured to this type of thing the longer I am here, so I am going to try to "re-notice" some of the oddities or differences herein for the benefit of those of you who don't live here.

In Part 2, I'll discuss the main reason we dry our laundry outside here.

In Part 3, I'll discuss the historical significance of the main point of Part 2.