Birthday Gift
March is a full month for us, with Sachiko’s Birthday, White Day, and our wedding anniversary. Sachiko’s birthday is what I decided to splurge on this year. Being as excited not about cleaning as much as she is about having a clean house, anything which can help in that direction is a sure-fire bet to make Sachiko happy. Sachi will always perk up at commercials with cleaning devices, and so this seemed the perfect choice:
The Roomba. What I didn’t expect was how expensive it would be. In the U.S., a similar model is about $350–already quite a bundle. But then you have to factor in the Japan appliance tax: almost any electronic appliance in Japan will end up costing about 30-50% more than the exact same item costs in the United States–especially if it is built in Japan. So the base unit was expensive–but the higher models cost a lot more for very little extra. For an extra $200 you can get a Roomba that auto-docks to a base station (so you don’t have to plug in the power charger), and for another $200 on top of that, there’s a model which you can program to clean on a schedule in addition to auto-docking. I didn’t feel that $400 was worth it just so we could avoid plugging in a cable and deciding when it would clean stuff, and so went with the base model.
Sachi was thrilled with the basic model. We charged it up and just watched it go. The robot would seem to constrain itself to small areas at first, but eventually would cover the whole room. I am not sure, but I got the impression that it learned the layout more or less, as it seemed to figure out how to navigate through the narrow areas better, cleaning more effectively under chairs and so forth as time went on.
Previously, Sachi would cover the entire apartment with her mop-brush thingy, complaining about my “cotton balls” (little balls of material often from socks) and “poodle hair” as well as the copious amounts of dust that seem to result from my presence. Now, she just starts the Roomba and instead relaxes for a good part of the morning–now working more on her blog (which I’ll get to soon).
Luis, you are pretty lucky if she liked it! Haven’t you seen this??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twivg7GkYts
Yeah, I know. The same thought occurred to me. But she really wanted this. I would have been just as happy if she had indicated something as we walked past the jewelry store, but this is what she got excited about.