How to Clean Your Okinawan Apartment (Lesson 1)

Not being the cleanest person in the world, by any stretch, but there is something about moving into a new apartment that begs for some regular, simple cleaning. Maybe it's the size - apartments tend to be small in Japan (a lot of people, a very limited space available to them) - maybe it's the attention to detail, the consistent demand that everything be "kawai" (cute). Maybe more so it's my fear of an ant infestation, or living in a cloud of fruit flies. Back home I would simply buy pesticide, or if it's really bad, contact an exterminator. But to do those things requires a lot of know how we simply don't have: we're illiterate and don't speak Japanese and so won't be calling or buying any products or services for a while.

So we clean to avoid the embarrassment of asking one of our fluent friends, "Could you ask tell me how to get an exterminator? We have these giant cockroaches living in the bathroom."

The best strategy, then, is to make sure the place doesn't invite bugs in the first place; so clean up.

We were very fortunate to have someone assist us in getting our apartment and not only is it perfect, but she also set us up with a few little things that go a LONG way, like paper plates and cleaning supplies.

Today we'll focus on cleaning the floor. Our apartment is western style, we have linoleum flooring and so makes cleaning pretty easy. We're also glad because we don't have to worry as much about the tatami becoming infested with bed bugs or ticks or what-have-you.

What did we get for cleaning the floors? That modern marvel, the Swiffer!

That's the brand name for it in the U.S. at least.

This is a great little tool, it's like a velcro broom.

Simply put one of these on there:

they come in packages like this:

and then follow this fun little illustration's example:

You'll be surprised at how quickly its gotta be changed:

To reduce the frequency of cleanings, we recommend you follow-up quickly with the "wet-wipe" version; or maybe it's the mop version (again, we are illiterate in this country so...):