How to Clean a Japanese Air Conditioner

Want to hear something gross? I just learned last week that air conditioning units are supposed to be cleaned once or twice a year. Yes, that means that in 4.5 years our air conditioner never once got cleaned. Oops. Can I blame this on growing up with central air? Last week when John and I both noticed a musty smell I googled it, and found this blogpost from Okinawa Hai incredibly helpful.

Basically, the front of the unit lifts up so that you can remove and clean the filters. Then while the filters are out you spray in some cleaner that kills mold, bacteria, etc. Following Okinawa Hai's recommendation we hung up a sheet to protect from drips. Honestly, none of the cleaner dripped out, so it seemed pretty unnecessary. It did catch a little dust the fell when we removed the filters, but I think that's probably due to how long our filters had gone uncleaned. After ten minutes you can return the filters and restart the air conditioner.

The whole process was very easy. We bought the cleaner on amazon for less than 400 yen, though it should be easy to find in hardware stores and probably drugstores. Immediately afterwards we noticed that the air in our apartment smelled fresher. So, if you didn't know this was necessary, or you haven't been sure how to do it, don't hesitate - it's very simple.

Air Conditioner Cleaner

Filters out - getting ready to spray

Super Gross Filters!

This is what they look like clean

How to Clean a Japanese Shower Room

I decided to write a follow-up to my humidity post after Raku and a I spent a long time searching through the cleaning section of our favorite drug store.  We've got all kinds of good stuff now, and the mildew doesn't stand a chance.

I've been here nearly a year now and I'm still discovering new products, or finally figuring out what they do, so I thought it might be useful to write about what I've found.

The most important new word I've learned is カビ, which means mildew.  So if you're looking for bathroom cleaner, カビキラー  (Kabi Killer) is the good stuff, it definitely had bleach in it.  In my experience the more red you see on the packaging the stronger it is.

Scrubbing Bubbles with カビキラー

Once you find a cleaning product you like, you can just buy refill bags rather than buying a whole new container each time.  When it is time to refill, make sure you're actually buying the same product!  Part of my problem was that I had refilled with something else, that clearly didn't have bleach in it.  When I dumped it out it was bright green and smelled like apples.  The new matching refill was a clear liquid that smelled a little minty.  Oops.

These are chlorine bleach tablets meant to go down drains.  They fizz and dissolve sort of like alka-seltzer.  I don't really know if they do all that much, but I've been using them down the shower drain about once a week.  Side note, the shower drains here are wide enough to put your hand down and filled with standing water.  They're normally covered by a plastic hair-catcher that snaps into place, and on top of that a removable metal grate.

This is a product to clean bathtubs, and even cleans out the jets, since the water doesn't just come out of a spout.  The directions say to fill your bathtub at least 5 cm above the jets with lukewarm water, dump in the powder, and set the temperature to 40° c.  Let the temperature rise for 10-15 minutes, then add 5 cm of cool water.  Set the temperature to 40° c again and allow the temperature to rise for 5 minutes, then drain.  I assume the temperature changes are to keep the water circulating in order to fully clean the jets.  It recommends submerging any bath stools, bowls, or soap dishes in the tub so that they can be disinfected at the same time.

And finally, this is a カビキラー pen to target small problem areas.  

Recent Purchases That Make Life Better

Over the past couple weeks John and I have been buying all the things we need to fully furnish our apartment, but I've also made some smaller purchases of things that just make daily life better.

I've never really cared for slippers much, I was more of a barefoot girl, but I suppose I mostly grew up with carpet and didn't have to experience ice cold floors.  I got these at Muji during the holiday sales.

I particularly love how these look like flats.

Speaking of Muji, I got some of their bath salts and sugars for Christmas.  It seems that the salts are a finer grain and a little more powdery, while the bath sugars seem to be larger crystals (I don't think they're really sugar) and a slightly stickier texture like there are more essential oils in them.  I really like both!

We also recently purchased a humidifier.  I had only ever been here in the summer when it's terribly humid, so I was very surprised to discover how cold and dry it becomes in the winter.  It seems that running the heat further dries out the already dry air, so we bought a hygrometer to keep track of the humidity level (and it turns out John like his humidity to resemble a summer day in Durham).

We chose the Middle Colors brand humidifier, partly because it's sold everywhere, and also because it was pretty cute.  It's ultrasonic so it doesn't have to heat the water, and it doesn't seem to have a problem with making dust.  It has very discrete controls, and works really nicely.  It also has an essential oils diffuser.

And finally, at the the grocery store I made the best cleaning discovery!  Our sink has a little mesh basket that catches food particles.  But then it is really gross and difficult to scrape everything out of the mesh.  Ugh!

While looking for trash bags one day, I came across these little bags that are net filters for sink baskets.

They look like teensy hair nets, and are stretchy, so they will fit a number of different sizes and shapes.

Ta-da! Now, I can just throw away these little bags instead of scraping grossness out with a spoon.  It's so cool, it almost keeps me from being disgusted when I change them.