Yesterday we were talking to our architect who had designed a path from our laundry through the kitchen then outside so that we could easily get the laundry out. He couldn’t quite fathom our proposed redesign of the kitchen because we took out that path, citing the lack of a clear path for laundry, saying it’s odd for people who do laundry every day.

So I guess that’s a huge difference right there between Japan and NZ, the number of times we do laundry, and this has a flow-on effect in the way we design our houses. We usually do our laundry maybe once every two or three days, and we’re also building a custom room to dry our laundry so we don’t have to use our lounge like we currently do.

In Japan they typically do grocery shopping every day as well. We don’t, but we probably do it more than we would if we lived in NZ, but I have a feeling this has more to do with city planning. NZ’s shopping districts are always centrally located, and as a result, you basically always need a car to do the shopping. It makes sense to only do it once or twice a week.

Japan on the other hand, there are smaller supermarkets more evenly spread out, which I think is better because there is less reliance on a car. Just some things I’ve picked up living here.