Decorative Pillows

I’m not made of money because if I were, I’d probably buy a visco elastic memory foam mattress aka the NASA memory foam mattress. You know those mattresses where they press the hand into it and the impression stays for several seconds… or there’s a glass of red wine on the bed and you can see people jumping on the mattress in the background, but the wine doesn’t spill. And I never would have known that I’d like to buy one if I became rich until I tried a memory foam mattress pad.
A few years ago, impressed by those Tempurpedic commercials, I went to a store that specializes in memory foam beds. Going to a store, and pressing your hand into a mattress and watching the imprint stay for several seconds, is worlds away from getting to sleep on one at night for a week to try it out. And then there’s the sticker shock as well as the disappointment, knowing that the darn thing is out of my price range anyways.
So fast forward a couple years later, my wife and I are shopping at Costco and they were selling a queen-sized memory foam mattress pad, that was listed as being an inch and a half thick. Well I recalled that the memory foam in the expensive mattress was also diagrammed as being an inch and half thick and that the rest of the mattress wasn’t too much different than a regular mattress. On top of that, Costco was selling the mattress pad for less than $100 if I remember correctly. So we snatched one up, and I have to tell you, it’s worth every penny! Together with my buckwheat pillow, I have never slept better.
There is a downside though and that is it’s hard to sleep on anything else after using a memory foam mattress topper for a while. My wife is Japanese and when we would go back to Japan, I had so much trouble sleeping on a futon. BTW, futons are horrible! If American futons were made the same way as Japanese futons, they wouldn’t be popular. Rock hard describes one extreme, while no support describes the other and there is no in between. I even tried sleeping on an air mattress–you know, camping style.

photo credit: bedzine

So when we decided to move to Japan, guess what? I drug that  mattress topper pad with me over here. As much as I try to go like a native here, I’m not putting up with a restless night sleep.
I guess the moral of the story is that if your not made out of money, but have trouble getting to sleep, you might seriously think about getting a memory foam mattress pad. Since being in Japan, I’ve moved three times and every time, the mattress pad and mattress was always the last thing to be moved and always the first thing to be setup in my new place. Because it sucks unpacking and working when you’ve had a terrible nights sleep.