In addition to space, it's expensive to run a dryer. Our energy bill is already crazy expensive without a dryer. Actually, the clothes dry pretty fast out on the balcony. Only during the colder months is it more challenging so the clothes are hung in one of the rooms with the air-con and they dry pretty quickly.
Japan is strange. I too always had the image of high tech, but living there you realize we're more high tech i the states, at least in Cali.
There definitely is a strange barrier where the great technology they have here isn't incorporated into daily life for some reason. Like the perpetual usage of fax machines here. It's amazing to me that people still use the things, but at the same time, it makes sense here: keeping people busy, having a tangible message you can hold in your hand, encouraging people to interact and reinforce office relations, being able to file something, these are all valued here. Maybe they are even valued over convenience. I'm not sure. It's a difficult are to make sense of.