The short version: the four modes on every Japanese air conditioner are 冷房 cooling, 暖房 heating, 除湿 dehumidify and 送風 fan-only. A wash cycle is 洗い → すすぎ → 脱水. Rice is 炊飯 to cook and 保温 to keep warm. The bath is 追い焚き to reheat. About 90 characters run every appliance in the country, and most of them are N5.
There is a very specific kind of humbling that happens somewhere in the first month of living in Japan. It is eleven at night. You have a suitcase full of clothes that need washing. You have studied - maybe you can read a menu now, maybe you have passed N4, maybe you have four hundred kanji in your head. And you are standing in front of a washing machine that is asking you a question in eight characters, none of which you have ever met, with a queue of nothing behind you and absolutely nowhere to look it up in a way that helps.
That gap is not a failure of your studying. It is a gap in what studying covers. Textbooks teach the Japanese of conversations and exams. Appliances speak a third register that nobody publishes a chapter about: compressed, verb-free, one word per action. 脱水 is not a sentence and never appears in a JLPT reading passage. It is a label welded to a motor.
Here is the good news, and it is the same good news that applies to street signage: the set is closed, small and identical nationwide. Learn the ninety characters below once and every appliance in every apartment, hotel and share house in Japan becomes readable - permanently.
Device 1 · エアコンThe air conditioner remote: four modes and one wrong assumption
The remote is the highest-stakes panel in the apartment, because getting it wrong in January means sleeping in the cold. Fortunately, its logic is transparent once you see it.
| Button | Reading | Meaning | What it actually does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 運転 | うんてん | Operation / run | The on switch. 運転切換 = switch modes. |
| 停止 | ていし | Stop | Turns the unit off. |
| 入 / 切 | いり / きり | On / off | The two characters that mean on and off on every Japanese device. |
| 温度 | おんど | Temperature | Set with 上 / 下 or ▲ / ▼. Winter target is usually 20–22°C. |
| 風量 | ふうりょう | Air volume | Fan speed: 自動 auto, 強 strong, 中 medium, 弱 weak, 静 quiet. |
| 風向 | ふうこう | Air direction | Where the louvres point. 上下 vertical, 左右 horizontal, スイング swing. |
| 自動 | じどう | Automatic | The unit picks the mode and speed for you. |
| タイマー / 予約 | よやく | Timer / schedule | 入タイマー turns it on later; 切タイマー turns it off later. |
| 内部クリーン | ないぶクリーン | Internal clean | Dries the coils after use. Leave it on; it prevents mould. |
The washing machine: three stages, one dangerous button
Almost every Japanese washing machine is built around the same three-stage sequence. Read those three and the rest of the panel is optional.
| Button | Reading | Meaning | When you want it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 標準 | ひょうじゅん | Standard course | The default. Wash, rinse, spin, done. |
| おまかせ | omakase | Leave it to me | The machine weighs the load and decides. Perfectly safe. |
| お急ぎ | おいそぎ | Quick wash | Lightly soiled clothes, roughly half the time. |
| 念入り | ねんいり | Thorough | Heavy dirt. Long cycle. |
| 手洗い | てあらい | Hand-wash course | Delicates - the machine imitates hand washing. |
| 水量 | すいりょう | Water level | Usually automatic. Raise it for bulky items. |
| 洗剤 / 柔軟剤 | せんざい / じゅうなんざい | Detergent / fabric softener | Two separate drawers. Softener goes in its own slot, never on the clothes. |
| 予約 | よやく | Timer | Finish at a set hour - useful for morning laundry. |
| 一時停止 | いちじていし | Pause | 一時 = temporary, 停止 = stop. Same 停止 as the AC remote. |
| 終了 | しゅうりょう | Finished | What the display says when it is done. |
| 槽洗浄 | そうせんじょう | Tub cleaning | Cleans the drum itself. Hours long, and no laundry inside. |
The rice cooker: why your rice is still raw
| Button | Reading | Meaning | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 白米 | はくまい | White rice | The default grain setting. |
| 無洗米 | むせんまい | Rinse-free rice | 無 = without, 洗 = washing. Pre-rinsed rice needs slightly more water. |
| 玄米 | げんまい | Brown rice | Much longer cycle - up to 90 minutes. |
| おかゆ | okayu | Rice porridge | What Japanese households eat when someone is ill. |
| 蒸らし | むらし | Steaming | The final rest stage. Do not open the lid; it is still cooking. |
| 予約 | よやく | Timer | Set the finish time, not the start time. |
The microwave: two buttons that look identical and are not
Everything else on a Japanese microwave is a convenience preset: 飲み物 (drinks), 牛乳 (milk), 酒かん (warming sake), 弁当 (a lunchbox), and on combination ovens オーブン, グリル and トースト. If a convenience store clerk asks 温めますか, that is the same 温め - they are offering to microwave your food.
The bathroom panel: the most Japanese appliance in the house
This one carries a piece of culture inside it. In a Japanese home the bath water is shared: everyone washes at the shower first and then gets into the same clean tub in sequence. Which is why the panel has a button no Western bathroom needs.
| Button | Reading | Meaning | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 沸き上がり | わきあがり | Bath is ready | The panel announces it out loud, in a cheerful voice. |
| 呼出 | よびだし | Call | Intercom between kitchen and bathroom panels. |
| 湯温 / 設定温度 | ゆおん / せっていおんど | Water temperature | 40–42°C is the standard Japanese bath. |
| ぬるく / あつく | — | Cooler / hotter | Adjective stems used as buttons: ぬるい lukewarm, あつい hot. |
| 保温 | ほおん | Keep warm | Same word as the rice cooker. Holds bath temperature for hours. |
The toilet panel: find 止 before you press anything
The rest: ビデ (front wash), 乾燥 (warm air dryer - the same 乾燥 as the washing machine), 水勢 (water pressure), 便座 (the heated seat), 洗浄 (washing), 流す (flush). On public toilets you will also meet 音姫 or 擬音 - a button that plays a flushing sound for privacy.
The 90 characters, sorted by how often they repeat
Notice how short this list is once duplicates are removed. That is the entire point.
| Appears on | Characters | Why it repeats |
|---|---|---|
| Every device | 入 切 止 大 小 中 強 弱 自動 予約 設定 運転 停止 | The universal control vocabulary of Japanese machines. |
| Anything with heat | 温 熱 冷 暖 湯 沸 保温 加熱 | Rice cooker, bath, microwave, AC, kettle. |
| Anything with water | 水 洗 湿 乾 燥 脱水 洗浄 給水 排水 | Washer, dishwasher, toilet, bath, AC drainage. |
| Anything with air | 風 送風 風量 風向 換気 | AC, fan, extractor hood, bathroom vent. |
| Timers | 時間 分 予約 タイマー 残り 終了 | Every appliance that finishes at some point. |
The three-step fix, tonight
1. Scan the panel you are standing in front of. Kanjijo’s OCR scanner reads a photo of any control panel, sign or label and returns the reading and meaning of every character on it. That solves tonight’s washing machine in about four seconds.
2. Turn the panel into cards. Every character you scan can be sent straight into the SRS engine, which schedules each review for the moment just before you would have forgotten - so the second time you meet 脱水 it is already familiar.
3. Put them where your eyes already go. The home screen and lock screen widgets show your due characters without opening anything, and the interactive test widget quizzes you in three seconds from the lock screen itself. Appliance kanji are exactly the kind of small closed set that ambient review demolishes in a week.
4. Keep the story attached. Every kanji and every vocabulary item in Kanjijo carries an exclusive mnemonic - ice on the left of 冷, fire on the left of 炊 - written to be pictured rather than memorised.
And the moment the appliances stop being the hard part, the rest of the app is already waiting: the full N5–N1 kanji, vocabulary and grammar banks, JLPT reading and JLPT listening practice, mock JLPT tests, plus conversation, shadowing and dictation tracks for the day the building manager knocks on your door and starts talking about 検針.
- OCR scanner for panels & labels
- Home & lock screen widgets
- Interactive test widget
- Exclusive kanji & vocab mnemonics
- SRS spaced repetition
- Full N5–N1 grammar bank
- JLPT reading practice
- JLPT listening practice
- Mock JLPT tests
- Conversation & shadowing
- Dictation training
- Zen design
Quick reference
- 冷房 / 暖房 / 除湿 / 送風
- Cool / heat / dehumidify / fan-only. 冫 ice in 冷, 日 sun in 暖.
- 洗い → すすぎ → 脱水
- Wash → rinse → spin. 標準 or おまかせ runs all three.
- 炊飯 vs 保温
- Cook rice vs keep already-cooked rice warm. 保温 is the one that is already lit.
- 温め vs 解凍
- Reheat vs defrost. 解凍 uses low power for a long time.
- 給湯 / 自動 / 追い焚き / 足し湯
- Hot water / auto-fill / reheat the same tub / top up.
- 止
- Stop. Same character on the toilet, the washing machine (一時停止) and the AC (停止).
- 入 / 切
- On / off, on every Japanese device ever made.
Related Reading on Kanjijo
Frequently Asked Questions
冷房 (れいぼう, reibou) is cooling and 暖房 (だんぼう, danbou) is heating. Both end in 房, an old word for a room, so they literally read as cooled room and warmed room. The characters tell you which is which without memorisation: 冷 carries 冫, the two-stroke ice radical, while 暖 carries 日, the sun. Two other modes share the same panel: 除湿 (じょしつ, dehumidify, often labelled ドライ) and 送風 (そうふう, fan only, no temperature change at all).
追い焚き (おいだき, oidaki) means reheating the water already in the bathtub, rather than draining it and running a fresh bath. Japanese households traditionally share one tub of clean water in sequence, so the boiler circulates and reheats that same water. Its neighbours on the panel are 給湯 (きゅうとう, hot water supply to the taps), 自動 (じどう, fill the tub automatically and hold the temperature), 足し湯 (たしゆ, top up with more hot water) and 沸き上がり (わきあがり, the announcement that the bath is ready).
They are the three stages of a wash cycle: 洗い (あらい) is the wash itself, すすぎ is the rinse, and 脱水 (だっすい) is the spin - literally remove-water. A normal load runs all three, and 標準 (ひょうじゅん, standard) or おまかせ (leave it to the machine) will do that for you. You only select stages individually when you want a partial cycle, for example 脱水 alone to re-spin a load that came out too wet. Avoid 槽洗浄 (そうせんじょう) unless you mean it - that is the tub self-cleaning programme and it can run for hours.
Because the button pressed was almost certainly 保温 (ほおん, keep warm), not 炊飯 (すいはん, cook rice). 保温 holds already-cooked rice at serving temperature and is the button most likely to be lit when you open the lid, so it is easy to assume it is the main one. 炊飯 starts the actual cook. Related buttons are 早炊き (はやだき, quick cook), 白米 (はくまい, white rice), 無洗米 (むせんまい, rinse-free rice), 玄米 (げんまい, brown rice), おかゆ (rice porridge) and 取消 (とりけし, cancel).
No. Appliance panels use a closed set of roughly ninety characters that repeat across every machine in the country, and many of them - 大, 小, 中, 強, 弱, 入, 切, 止, 温, 水 - are N5 characters you already know. What makes the panels hard is not difficulty but exposure: textbooks never show them, so a learner at N3 can read a newspaper headline and still stand in front of a washing machine at midnight with no idea which button starts it. Scanning the panel once and turning those characters into review cards closes the gap in an evening.
Never stand in front of a control panel again
Kanjijo turns Japanese text you cannot read into text you can: an OCR scanner that reads any panel, label or sign through your camera, exclusive mnemonics for every kanji and vocabulary word, an SRS engine that reviews each card at the moment before you forget, and home, lock screen and interactive test widgets that keep the characters in front of you all day. Then keep going - full N5–N1 kanji, vocabulary and grammar, JLPT reading and listening practice, mock tests, conversation, shadowing and dictation. Free on iPhone.
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