Nothing says travel like going to the laundry

Nikko apparently shuts down, as in it is difficult to find an open restaurant after 8pm, early. This in mind we believe we've arrived early enough to have time to wash our clothes and still get out early enough to get a feed. We'd tried to limit how much luggage we had to carry by only, only, having enough changes of clothes for about 5 days. Some travellers can get by with less, some more. Our 5 or 6 days were up and we were in need of a laundry. Luckily we found one on the drive into town.

The next trick was figuring out how to use the machines and get detergent. Not a single instruction in English anywhere in the laundry. Fortunately washing machines aren't rocket science. The laundry also had a coin change machine and a detergent dispenser. Once we got a load or two on all we had to do was wait. The laundry had a radio blaring for entertainment so we were serenaded by the latest J-pop while Georgia crashed around the wheeled laundry baskets. When she got bored with that there was a little kiddie play area with a plastic slide for her to attempt breaking her neck. When she bored of playing on the slide I took her for a walk outside to the car park and showed her a dirty lump of snow piled in a corner of the car park. Georgia's first snow. Dirty, icy and a little lame looking, but snow.

The laundry had a rack of magazines and manga and the ubiquitous vending machines. I had a can of sickly sweet hot coffee.

The laundry also had sneaker washing machine. I've never seen something like that before. It looked a little like a microwave. Maybe it was the dryer?

Most the time there we had the place to ourselves except for a young guy who put on a load of washing and a woman who came to use a dryer. It was a quiet Friday evening in Nikko town. It was just on dark when we finished drying and shrinking our t-shirts. Time to look for something eat. Of course Michelle hadn't just been sitting around flicking through magazines and looking pretty while washing machine and dryer were doing there thing. Michelle had been researching restaurants in the guide books. We had a couple of options for dinner. Now all we had to do was find them.

If you're looking for a coin laundry in Japan go to Google Maps and look for your hotel. Then search for コインランドリー . This means coin laundry. If you're in Nikko the address of the laundry we went to is:

コインランドリー しゃぼん日光店

Japan 〒321-1413 Tochigi Prefecture, Nikko, Aioicho, １８−３
+81 288-53-5631
Hopefully this is a link to a map.