What's the Blue?

The pink is the peach blossom tree in our garden. So what's the blue?


Baba's laundry hanger. I've posted other photos of laundry hangers from other gardens.


But I haven't posted this. It is the window box outside our second floor dining room window.


When we first moved in, I used to put potted plants there. After I watered them, they'd drip on Baba's laundry or futon. Baba and Aunt live downstairs. Usually there is more laundry hanging outside their sitting rooms.

Great Days for Laundry

 

June is the rainy season. Drying laundry is difficult. We have to hang it indoors. We do have a dryer, but we only use it for towels. We've had some great days for laundry so far this month.

Neither of these houses is ours.

Walking to the Hardware Store

Today was hot and sunny. No surprise that people had their laundry and futon outside. Actually, I was surprised that there weren't very many futon out. On my way back home, it started to rain. As I passed this way again, the woman was scrambling to get her beds inside and I was carrying my dogs' toilet sheets over the camera case to keep it dry. She and I didn't watch the weather report this morning. There was a lot of thunder, too. No wonder there hadn't been many people out on the street as I was coming and going. The weather report includes thunder forecasts. The reports can be pretty accurate here, but not as accurate as they used to be when I first came to Japan in 1988. Baba usually watches me as I leave and tells me to take an umbrella. She was asleep on the sofa today when I left.






I took this picture of these two houses to show how close some houses are here. I am amazed how the sun makes its way through the most narrow and smallest places. These houses open to the west. Look between the houses at how much sun the house on the left gets even though the house on the right is so close. Amazing.






I saw these two dragonflies. I took many pictures of them trying to get a close-up. Each one would fly away and then light in only two places. The top two pictures are of the same dragonfly on her two chosen places. The one in the bottom picture chose another place that was too difficult for me to get close enough to take a picture so I only got this spot. My son said that many dragonflies came during pool time at school today. Some were red and some were orange. No blue ones went to his school.

I'll show you pictures from the hardware store tomorrow.

Bath Water For Laundry

Along with garbage, laundry was part of fifth grade homework recently, too (see May 9th). With our laundry machine all you have to do is load it, push a button, and wait. The machine weighs the clothes and determines how much soap to put in. It tells you how much soap is needed! Pretty easy for anyone. The capacity of the machine is quite small so several loads are necessary. Machines come in various sizes. See the really small one in the first picture? I took this picture in a recycle shop. This one must be for an apartment. Some people don't have room so they have to put their laundry machines outside on their balcony. Rough in rainy weather.

Our laundry machine has a hose with a filter so that we can use bath water to wash clothes. This is the only way we can have hot water to wash clothes. The washing machine is next to the bath. We can open the sliding door, put the hose into the bathtub, and push a button for that option. Sounds yucky? Well, you may have heard that in Japan, a shower is taken before you get into the bathtub. I'll explain bath time at another time.