@Natanox@benoit@globalc I asked electrician who was wiring our place and in Japan they use a different protection scheme than in US. Electrical code here is to have short circuit protection rather than ground failure (wet places like bathroom and kitchen still should have ground screw - benefit here is you can disconnect older appliance while keeping it grounded). In newer places entire box has GFCI as on one of pictures in this thread.
@benoit Cool, was not aware. Good to know it's around now! Might be chicken and egg problem now to get appliances to also come with that plug.. because that's useless if you only have the old outlet :)
@globalc that's because your apartment is not recent enough. I have the three prongs type, but I still need to fallback on the external ground cable depending on the appliance. π
I was just using the washing machine for the first time and added another fun part to the article: power outlets do not have a proper contact for "ground". So outlets intended to be used by washing machines etc. have a small lid, a screw, and then you attach the ground cable manually..
I wonder which content warning this needs for electrical engineers ;)