Explore everyday life in Japan
As you walk through Japan, you are bound to see laundry, pillows, futons, and other things hanging from outdoor laundry poles, resting on rooftops, and draped over balconies and window sills. You may even notice shoes lined up outside of houses, collecting the sun's rays, and you may see houses with their windows and doors wide open, even on the coldest of days. This is because Japan is a very humid country, and moisture here is a big problem.
Living in an open and uncluttered space with good air flow is one of the best things you can do to keep your house or apartment from being overtaken by the infamous black fungal spores of Japan, and periodically airing out your shoes, hats, and other closet dwelling possessions is the best way to keep them from becoming what look like artifacts of a mold terrarium. But doing so takes vigilance.
To help you with your mold prevention battles, you can buy these closet dehumidifiers at just about any one-hundred-yen store in Japan. They cost one-hundred-yen a piece and, depending on their location, and the severity of your moisture problem, can last up to one year. All you have to do is take the plastic lid off the top of the dehumidifier, remove the foil seal from the top of the water catch, return the lid to its initial place, and put the dehumidifier in the corners of your closets, near your windows and doors, and in any other place that you may be having mold problems.
I can't begin to tell you how many shoes and hats I lost when I first came to Japan due to sudden mold outbursts. I would go away for a weekend, come back, open the shoe closet in the foyer of my apartment, and to my surprise, find things like a pair of leather hiking boots that looked like they were made of mohair. Nobody told me about these mini dehumidifiers, or the packets full of moisture absorbing silicone when I first came here. To those of you who are planning on spending a year or more in Japan, I highly recommending making good use of these things. They will save you a lot of hassle and heartache.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting daily updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.