Laundries are everywhere you look when you walk along the streets of Japan. One reason for their prevalence might be the Japanese seasons. With the four distinct seasons in this country, people wear different clothes each season. One common custom at the end of each season is to bring the clothes worn in the past season to laundries so that they will be clean and ready to wear next year. From these circumstances, Japanese laundries have built up advanced techniques to remove soil and stains from clothes, and even shoes and bags.

Meticulous Garment Cleaning That Fully Uses Partial Dyeing Techniques Too!

Let's first look at laundry services for clothes and the full commitment to delivering results demonstrating true workmanship. The motto of a laundry established in 1922 is: We carefully wash and rinse repeatedly using natural water that has been stored underground for 300 years. The reasoning behind the motto is that treatment with clean water gets clothes remarkably clean. The company has studied water temperatures and the washing process to understand how to make garments last longer. Clothes that might lose their shape or shrink easily are washed with a dedicated solvent instead of water. As a rule, the solvent is not discharged outside but recycled instead, in consideration of the environment. Using distillation equipment, this company's laundries take out impurities from the solvent several times a day to always keep the solvent clean.

Difficult-to-remove stains, on the other hand, require a different approach because any attempt to scrub off these stains may damage the material. An alternative technique is to first bleach only the stained part to completely get rid of the discoloration, and then retouch the color by dyeing that part to bring it close to its original appearance. Advanced stain removal techniques were developed for kimonos, Japan's traditional clothes. Kimonos are made of silk or cotton pieces stitched together. They feature wide sleeves, which look rather like long sleeves that hang down. Every kimono is worn with a belt called an "obi." The traditional techniques for these elaborate outfits are applied at these laundries to carefully prepare colors that match perfectly with their surrounding colors.

Kimonos take a lot of time and effort to clean, and so do suits. After washing a suit jacket, the laundry shapes the jacket with a special machine to give it a nicely rounded silhouette, because the look of the jacket is affected by chest size. Then, for the finishing touch, even the lining is ironed so that the suit looks almost brand new when returned to the owner.

Superb Shoe Cleaning That Disinfects and Deodorizes

Shoe cleaning services too have appeared in Japan. One laundry washes all types of shoes in water with the detergent, brush, sponge, etc. that are individually appropriate to the shoe material. Even leather shoes are washed in water, although leather shoes and water are said to be mortal enemies. The water wash uses a special detergent that does not damage leather shoes. Afterward, the washed shoes dry gradually in a room kept at a temperature between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius and a relative humidity of 35%. This is essential to preventing damage by overly rapid drying.

Deodorization and disinfection processes are also essential as they get rid of foot odor in shoes. Using sterile water developed by this company, the disinfection process at the laundry goes on for a rather long time, between 12 and 24 hours, to completely remove the bacteria that causes odor.

The finishing touches afterward include the application of moisturizing cream to the shoes. At the end of the whole process, the shoes are compared with their photographs taken before cleaning to check for defects.

Japan has many coin laundromats too, by the way, where you can see coin-operated washing machines dedicated to sneakers. The machines are convenient. Simply put your whole sneakers into one to get them washed and dried. Looking at these machines, you can see that Japanese people care about taking care of shoes.

Bag Cleaning – Even Luxury Bags Look Brand New Again!

There is an abundance of cleaning services for bags too. At one laundry, bags are hand washed one by one, with the material type and condition of each bag taken into consideration. The laundry has its own dedicated water for washing suede and other materials that easily crack on the surface or contain oils that come out easily. The concerns that customers have expressed about their bags include darkened handles on leather bags, ink stains left accidentally by ballpoint pens and cat urine stains. In most cases, even these stains are removable, which is reassuring, isn't it?

This company also measures and quantifies changes in leather products from before to after cleaning. They want to clearly show, using numerical values in addition to observable changes in appearance, whether leather is damaged. Their machines take precise measurements of the expansion or contraction and temperature of the leather before and after cleaning and any changes in oil content. As a result, they have data that can prove their washing does not degrade leather.

Japanese laundry services clean garments, shoes, bags and other items indispensable in our daily lives—even the hard-to-reach areas are spotless. They are full of the skill of artisans in work done by hand and leading-edge technology. It is a mix of man and machine. See for yourself by trying out laundry services when you are in Japan.