Chiba Days #5 - I Bought a Futon

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale for another chapter of Chiba Days. While autumn may have only just passed the halfway point, the weather in Chiba has begun to become rather chilly as of late. While autumns in Japan are not known to be particularly cold, the recent string of rainy weather has brought the ambient temperature down rather significantly. 

When I first landed in Narita a week back, the ground temperature was 25 Celsius with a low of 19 Celsius. Now though, the temperature has dropped to as low as 7 Celsius on a cold rainy day. After one frigid night of uneasy sleep, I decided my simple blanket was not going to cut it and I needed something more heavy duty. What I needed was a futon. Fortunately, the local Nitori was not too far away from my apartment as I set out futon hunting.

Nitori is one of Japan's biggest furniture and interior goods store. Almost like Ikea but, with more regionally selective choice of interior goods such as futons, kotatsu and other compact furniture idea usually not seen outside Japan. Nitori had a large selection of futon(s) to choose from with everything from complete sets to individual components. After comparing several available options, I opted for a 6 piece futon set which would fit both my price and comfort needs.

The 6 piece futon set, as its namesake, comes with six different items which make up a single futon. This included a pillow, pillow cover, futon base, futon base cover, futon blanket and futon blanket cover. The whole thing weighed a little under 10 kilograms by my estimate. Rather hefty but, not too heavy that I was not able to carry it back with me to the apartment.

If anything it would be the bulk of the box which made it difficult to carry. As I found out later on, the box was already as small as it would get thank in part to the vacuum packed futon allowing for the futon to take up half the volume it would normally need.

As you can see from the picture above, my current bedding was woefully insufficient to bear the chills of autumn and the coming winter. It would have been perfectly fine if it was summer but, we are way past that point now. With blade in hand and no instructions available, I set out to put together my futon set. Fortunately, everything was rather idiot-proof and within 15 minutes I have had everything set up!

Here is how my bedding now looks like with the futon installed. A much needed upgrade if any to brace for the cold weather in the coming months. Thus far, the futon has managed to keep me warm even in the coldest of nights with temperatures as low as 7 degrees Celsius. Come winter, the weather is only going to get colder and I hope my futon will hold up even then. Only time will tell but, I am hoping this marks the end of my shivering nights. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead.