Recently Mr and I have been having a few problems with our beds. Firstly, the nice pillow that I had bought (more on that later) seemed to give Mr an allergic reaction. And with his bed, he had accidentally messed up the sizes of his bed and bought a duvet that is slightly larger than a single but definitely not fit for a double bed – but bought a double sized cover for it. I had made the same mistake with the duvet but luckily my covers are all the right size.
As we were trudging round Galeria looking at overpriced covers we were saying how much easier it is in our home countries, where sizes came in “single”, “double” etc as opposed to numbers. And it got me thinking, the way we go about making our beds in different countries is more different than you’d think. But it’s something so trivial, no one really talks about it. So I will. Let me go through a few observations I’ve had from owning a bed in the UK, Germany and in Japan.
Let’s start with the one that I am most familiar with – the UK.
1. The pillow. British people love their pillows. Well, more so than the Japanese and Germans. We love our memory foam, contoured, textured, scientifically proven to be beneficial pillows. The one that Mr was allergic to was one of these – a wonderful contoured foam one with the offensive layer or feathers lining the top. It’s wonderful.
But in the UK you can buy all kinds of pillows, hard and soft. There’s a really wide range.
2. The duvet. As I said before, back home we have sizes in words, so it’s dead easy to go get a new cover, and it’s idiot proof if you need to buy a duvet for your new bed.
3. Duvet covers end at the bottom, and usually have poppers as opposed to zips. Sometimes with posh covers there are buttons too.
Now onto my current home.
1. German pillows are a bit weird. They are really soft, and are square – not rectangular. I’m not sure how people use them.. growing up with adverts telling me I’ll die an early death if I don’t sleep on something that supports my neck makes me doubt these German pillows. But Mr has these on his bed, and they are actually not so bad. I’ve not seen ones on sale that are harder, but then again, I’ve never really looked. They seem to me like cushions you’d put on a sofa as opposed to something you’d sleep on.
2. Duvet sizes come in idiot-confusing numbers. I am an idiot. So, I bought the wrong sized duvet for my bed. It covers the top, and the top only. German duvets are really good quality though. Though at uni in Liverpool I got one from Tesco that was thick and only a tenner, German duvets are not cheap at all, but are such good quality. I’m sure you can get them in other places, but my duvet comes in two layers, that you attach together during the winter. It’s VERY snuggly.
3. Duvet covers open from the bottom like British ones, but they come in zips which have no handles, and a hole with which to extract your thumb once you’ve finished zipping. It’s pretty cool.
1. Japanese pillows are the best. Full stop. They take a while to get used to them, but once you do, you never turn back. They are HARD and small and full of hard beans. It’s awesome. You will never wake up with a crick in your neck. Well, maybe you will. But that’s probably because you do not understand how awesome Japanese pillows are. Don’t worry, if you are a tourist going round Japan, Japanese hotel owners know how weak foreigners are and have a collection of soft pillows so you don’t have to put up with a Japanese one.
2. Duvets come in numbers again. I gave up trying to find the right sized covers after a while. It was really confusing. Japanese people like to add stuff to their beds depending on the season – in summer you put a liner under your sheet on top of the mattress to make you cooler. In winter you have something you attach to your duvet to make it heavier, and throws for on top of the bed. That last one probably isn’t so different – but it’s the obsession that Japanese people have with these things, and if you don’t have these on your bed then your Japanese friends (especially if you are friends with old ladies) will force you to own and use these things for fear of death.
3. Duvet covers open from the side, which makes putting on duvet covers SO much easier. They also come in zippers too. Ease all around.
So there we have it! No one country has the all-round better way of doing beds. If I had my way, I’d have a Japanese pillow, British duvet sizing and German duvets. THAT would be an easy, awesome bed.
Perhaps some of my observations are wrong – please do write a comment if you have something to add. Or if you are in a different country all together, please let me know how things are where you are.
The three pictures were drawn on my 3DS.
