On Bed vs Futon

 I have lived more than half of my entire life choosing a bed for my sleeping equipment rather than futon, but yet I much prefer sleeping in the latter. Therefore, I demolished my bed last year which I had used for more than 40 years since childhood, and now I sleep in futon every night.

I don’t prefer sleeping in futon without reasons.

Here are but a few of them.

<Greater Freedom to Use Limited Space>

One obvious reason is that futon gives you greater freedom to use what limited space you have. For example, your bedroom is usually entirely occupied by your bed. You cannot fold it easily to put it into a nearby storage room unless your bed is a foldable one. A large bed would leave you very little space to do other things. On the other hand, use of futon allows you to use your bedroom (in this case it should be called ‘futon-room’, perhaps?) for entirely new purposes. For example, I spread my futon in the guest room of my residence. When morning comes and I put the futon in the closet, what was my bedroom during the night becomes a guest room again, ready to welcome visitors if any.

<Perfect Exercise to Start a Day>

Putting your futon back in the closet every morning is a good exercise. There are a number of items you need to fold and carry. Folding these items involves multiple joint movements. So does carrying them. Large pieces of futon are moderately heavy. Carrying them stimulates your back and thigh muscles without hurting them. By the time you have put all items away, your heart rates are slightly up, and you are fully awake, ready for the day.

<Discipline>

Daily futon folding can be a easy way to discipline yourself. One way to nurture self-discipline in your mind-body is by respecting boundaries in your daily life. By ritualistically repeating the task of futon folding after waking up before starting all the other important activity at the start of the day such as getting dressed and having breakfast, you clearly demarcate between the end of your rest phase and the beginning of the work phase. In fact, if you a top performer in your field, this seemingly tedious repetition cannot be easily neglected. This is because Mr. Harada, who is a former teacher and track team couch of Matsumushi Junior High School and now a seminar instructor, once advised his students to help their parents with house chores. According to him, the habit of doing small daily routines makes a strong mind that enables one to do things that are more difficult later. I feel the same can be said with the routine of spreading futon at night and folding it in the morning. After doing it day after day, other small home maintenance activities are also felt to be easy. And your household is generally kept nice and tidy, compared with those resided in by owners without such a daily habit.

There are countless other advantages of futon over bed. Moving is a lot easier. It can be fluffy again if you ask a pro. You can make several cushions from an old piece of futon. It is easier than a mattress to take out under the sun for drying and sanitizing.

To conclude, futon, traditional Japanese sleeping equipment, offers so many merits over beds to its user, and is highly recommendable to live a healthy and organized life. I would not say beds suck because I can certainly see their merits. Once you put a bed in a room, it’s there forever. You can throw yourself on it whenever you want to. You can sit on the edge, using it like a chair also. These are all merits of beds that I myself once enjoyed, and that I would if I had one. But nevertheless, I will probably never buy a bed for the rest of my life, and will stick to futon. I simply cannot resist all the Japanese traditional wisdom folded into it…