Futon Life, chapter 3

When last we left our hero (a cotton-fibre sleeping mattress), it was becoming lonely and thinking longingly of tatami mats to rest upon. Now read on.

Futon Life, chapter 2

When last we left our hero (a cotton-fibre sleeping mattress), it had at last completed its lengthy journey from Japan to my flat, and was being aired in the sun. Now read on...

Futon Life, chapter 1

So the last, oh, two months of almost total silence aren't just me running out of things to say. I've actually been moving across country to start my new job in sunny glamorous really quite nice Sheffield.

I eventually managed to find a rather nice attic flat over some shops in a bustling part of town, with half an hour's walk of the town centre and my job. This relatively modern, well-maintained １ＬＤ・Ｋ* costs only slightly more than the single room I was renting in a cramped Victorian house in Oxford. There's that North-South divide for ya.

* Japanese real estate shorthand: 1 room, living-dining-room, and kitchen.

Ever since I started planning the move, I've been seriously considering getting a futon. A little clarification is needed here, because English has decided to be really annoying in that way it sometimes is with loanwords. See, a futon as we know it in the UK is almost (but not quite) entirely different from the Japanese futon that we stole the word from.