Japan’s laundromat cafes let you enjoy tea and cake while you wait for your clothes to be cleaned

Japan's laundromat cafes let you enjoy tea and cake while you wash your clothes — Japan’s laundromat cafes make doing your laundry an experience. (Picture: PR Times)

Japan gets a lot of things right.

They were the first people to do the animal cafe thing. Japan’s the place with the best food, the best festivals (cherry blossoms or penis? Take your pick), the coolest fashion and the greatest skincare innovation.

There are so, so many reasons we wish we could up sticks and move to Japan, and loads more parts of life in Japan we’d quite like to bring over to the UK.

One of those parts of life: Laundromat cafes.

In the UK a visit to the laundromat isn’t exactly an exciting experience. You go in, you dump your washing in a machine, then go off and do your errands to kill the time until you can retrieve your belongings.

If we lived in Japan, however, we’d be tempted to do daily loads of washing.

That’s thanks to a few establishments turning the act of laundry into an experience, rather than just something to tick off your to-do list – by making laundromats double as cool cafes.

Lavano, Baluko Laundry Place, and Kissa Laundry are each new spots in Japan that pair laundry with a place for people to relax, work, and enjoy a snack.

Each have washing machines available for use as well as dry-cleaning services. While you wait for your clothes to emerge clean and dry, you can sip a cup of coffee, eat some cake, or use the free wifi to get some work or marathon-watching done.

You don’t even need to do laundry to pop along – you can enjoy laundromat cafes as simply cafes if you fancy.

But it’s nice to have a relaxing zone where you can do your errands and treat yourself to something delicious, right?

So far we’ve only found one similar establishment in the UK; Odd Socks, in Guisborough. Here’s hoping other business owners notice the trend and open up a load of laundromat cafes near us – we really like the idea of sipping a matcha latte as we wait for our delicates to be done.