Sleep matters for your health, but for someone like me who never settles in one place and is always moving around, putting together a perfect sleeping environment is not easy.
Shohei Ohtani
I bought a pillow this time, and they threw these in.
You get a case too.
This kind of pillow
This pillow turned out to be really good. The middle is scooped out and the two sides are made of a springy, high-resilience material. That spreads your weight nicely, so it protects your neck whatever position you sleep in. Honestly, if you just sleep on your back your neck sits low, so a low pillow is enough, but once you roll onto your side your shoulder pushes your neck up and the pillow has to be taller. Why does that matter? Because these days we usually look at our phones before falling asleep, and using a low pillow in that position is bad for your neck. In other words, if you could put the phone down and go to sleep you would not need a good pillow, but that is not going to happen, so you need an ergonomic one. Your posture shifts while you sleep anyway, so even on that count I think a two-layer structure like this is essential. Anyway, the pillow I bought is good, but whether it is durable as well is something you only find out by using it. Cheap pillows seem to go flat in a year or two and good ones seem to last five years or more, but since I will not know how long this one lasts until I have used it, it is hard to judge right away whether the price is cheap or expensive. For what it is worth, gel pillows are in fashion lately and are said to be durable; I would like to try one someday.
MuAtsu mattress
I have a lot to say about mattresses, but the best product is one that does not take up much space and is light and long-lasting. In that sense a spring bed is actually a good choice. It doubles as a chair or a sofa, and because it sits high it is easy to get up from. The inside of the springs is air, so there is little chance of nasty stuff or bugs building up. So with a spring bed it is best to buy the cheapest, hardest one, get a model with almost no cushioning on the top panel, and put a topper on it instead. Expensive beds put the emphasis on that cushion layer and charge more for it, which is actually inefficient; it just shortens the life of the mattress. Anyway, spring beds are good, but they have the problem of taking up a lot of space. In Japan, where rooms are small, they are not that popular and the mainstream is the tri-fold mattress. Look closely and you will see that international bedding brands too, Tempur and Koala and so on, sell tri-fold mattresses once they move into Japan. In Korea, tri-fold beds seem to be used mainly by people living in studio flats.
So tri-fold beds have a long history in Japan. The premium brand among them is MuAtsu, Nishikawa’s flagship. It is urethane-based, and its signature is the bumpy, egg-crate surface. They say it spreads your weight well and the material lasts a long time. The only problem is that it can trap heat in summer, but Tempur is much the same on that front. Anyway, being a premium mattress, it definitely feels upmarket. What I bought this time, though, is the 5cm topper version, and that thickness is fine as a topper but too thin on its own. You need at least 10cm. Buying a 10cm one outright sends the price way up, so I figured the best move was to use this as a topper and put a cheaper mattress underneath: you keep the performance and bring the price down. A decent mattress from this brand runs 200,000 yen, whereas 50,000 for the topper plus 50,000 for a cheap mattress gets you similar or better performance for 100,000.
So I ordered a Magniflex
It comes rolled up like this. It is a very famous mattress brand in Japan. They advertise it as made in Italy, but it is surely a brand that is more popular in Japan than at home.
Unrolled, it looks like this.
It does fall short on the luxury feel. But Magniflex has strengths of its own. Namely that the material is light, breathable and firm. Being breathable, it stands up very well to sweat and dust mites, and being light it is easy to put away. The resilience is firm in just the right measure, so it does not wear on you over time and it supports your lower back well. In short, it is a good material for a mattress, and not many others copy it. Anyway, I slept on it, and it is a bit firm under the lower back, which is slightly uncomfortable, but lay a single topper on it and the balance becomes perfect.
A quick aside: I think I need to explain the problem with Korea’s mattress industry. A good mattress has everything to do with body weight. Your body has curves, and under gravity those curves sink into the mattress. The ideal is for it to sink to match those curves. Then your whole body is supported and you get restful, fatigue-free sleep. But if there is too little resilience, the hollows sink just as much as the bulges. Too hard, on the other hand, and your curves get flattened out and you wake up tired. That is why some beds are built with the lower-back section firm, because that part should sink less, and the hip and chest sections soft. Then again, you do not sleep flat on your back all night, so I am not sure how much a system like that really means.
So there is in fact no way for two people of different weights to sleep in one bed and both sleep comfortably. It only works if your weights are close. That is why in Japan, when they sell a mattress, they tell you what weight range it is aimed at. This mattress is for 60-80kg, that sort of thing. Above or below that, it is hard to sleep well on the same mattress. While you are young a mediocre mattress does not stop you getting up and going about your day, but that gets harder with age. So a mattress’s spec and your body weight are important indicators, and yet the people selling mattresses in Korea sell them with “a mattress that fits the Korean body type!” It is a con that makes no sense at all. There is no way a mattress exists on which both an 80kg Korean and a 50kg Korean can sleep well.
Ultimately this is a problem of the domestic market’s structure. Mattresses in Korea are a Simmons/Ace duopoly, and to make money on a new mattress you have to sell at least 30,000 to 40,000 units, but the Korean market is small, so targeting that finely does not pay. So the structure leaves them no choice but to con people. Researching mattresses taught me that a country needs a big domestic market before its people can sleep well. Anyway, houses in Korea are big, so pocket springs will do. Then you add a topper matched to your weight. Latex mattresses, for instance, do not hide behind vagueness and give you a proper density spec, because with latex the density is tied to the cost and the weight. Using one with too high a density is not good for a light person either. Latex is heavy, but it is about the only thing you can trust in Korea, so if you are buying straight online I would recommend it; otherwise it is better to go to a shop and try one before choosing. Of course, if your weight is average you will probably be fine with almost anything, so as long as you avoid the really cheap stuff you are okay. The worst are things like Tempur: it is memory foam, and at a high density it supports you well, but the cheap US-made ones were far too soft. Avoid those if you can and be sure to pick a mattress whose resilience matches your weight. The air-block type mattresses coming out lately are hygienic by design, light and easy to look after, which is nice, but in the end they only come in one firmness.
You might think, why not just buy one expensive thing and be done with it? I wanted to do that too, but life does not go the way you want, and once you start buying you can never stop at one.
Giga Makura (“giga pillow”) EX, the Snorlax model
This one is remarkable too. A pillow is normally understood as something that just has to support your neck properly, but this pillow supports your whole upper body. Come to think of it, that is the right idea. Your neck and your body are not separate things, so why support only the neck?
This size
It does not matter whether you sleep on your side or in any other position, and as I said earlier, your upper body has curves along the back anyway, so while the lower back needs firm support, the upper body is better off with some cushioning. So with this pillow you get the same effect as buying a topper without buying one. I mean, what unbeatable value for money. The only catch is that the pillow itself is bulky, so it is a hassle to deal with, but Snorlax is cute, so I have no complaints. Looking into things like this and actually using them made me realise how wide the world is and how many better ways there are out there. There is a lot to learn.
What we all need to know is that a good mattress is one that suits your own body, is hygienic and is easy to look after. “It is expensive because it has this particular feature”, a hotel bed for example, has more to do with showing off than with the essence of sleeping well. I hope you gather good information and sleep well.
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