Japanese Problem -> Japanese Solution

I know. It's been a while since we've posted and I have such an uninteresting, purely utilitarian, post. But, we were so excited today on this one. It also gives people a quick peek at a part of our house. I know people are asking for pictures of the house, but we're still working on parts of it...

Before we moved into the house, we'd talked with the previous residents and one of the problems with the house was the unsavory smell that occasionally came up from the washing machine drain. OK, it wasn't just unsavory, it was sewer smell! They said it wasn't very often and they said they had some sealing putty (monkey s**t) to seal around the hose to seal out the smell, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. We didn't smell it at the time and I felt that an engineer, like myself, could overcome any piping problem with ease. So, we took the house.

The drain is just a hole in the floor. The base guys that brought in the washer threw the drain hose from the washer down the hole just like the previous renters had. It only took me a couple of days to go in and seal around the hose with the putty. Problem was that the smell still came up. It was coming up the hose and through the washing machine. It only happened occasionally, but it was disturbing, and embarrassing, when it did. I know that 'P' traps are normally used to keep sewer gasses from coming back into the house. I was beginning to think that the builders of the house missed that little part and we were going to call the realtor to ask that it be fixed. We were hemming and hawing on how to do this since the Japanese don't directly say that someone else messed up. You phrase it like you messed it up and need help to resolve it. I also figured that problems with Japanese houses have Japanese solutions, and that we very well might have missed something here.

Today, Caroline brought out a piece of foreign plumbing that had been loose and in her way under the sink and asked if it might be the solution for the smell and whether we should call the realtor guy about it. I looked at it in astonishment before I told her not to bother calling, this was definitely the solution! It was the adapter for that drain in the floor. It snugged itself into the hole with an O-ring seal and has a P trap portion below and a place to hook up the hose above. The hardest part of installing it was getting all the putty off everything. It'll take a few days to ensure that it solves the problem, but we are both just thrilled to have figured it out.