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Looking for decent tatami mats in the usa. I'm (mostly) clueless on this matter.
and a good japanese futon mattress as well.
i'm moving from a house into an apartment and am scaling my life down significantly. this seems a pretty good option... but unfortunately i don't know a whole lot about either of these (yet) so i'm looking for some guidance.
thanks!
I was very interested in exactly this question about 2 years ago. I lived in a kitchen-hallway-bedroom type of basement apartment, but still wanted to host people. Given the lack of a living room, I wanted to put a couch in my bedroom and sleep on the floor.
I had been eyeing the shikibutons from J-Life, and I was going to shell out for the tatami mats, too. But, before I did, I decided to opt for a cheaper "tester" option: A fold-up memory foam mattress off Amazon.
I ended up liking the memory foam mattress well enough that I never actually bought a futon at all, saving myself several hundred dollars in the process. It might be worth considering if you want to try out the lifestyle shift before jumping all the way in?
((And, if you don't end up liking it, in my experience the folding memory foam mattress beats a blow up mattress any day for hosting overnight guests on a whim.))
((PS: Sorry that I didn't actually answer your question!))
Well, tanks a lot.
Thanks to you guys I now have a buckwheat neck pillow on the way.
... Jerks.
I bought my futon and mat from J-Life a couple of years ago and I love it. I sleep great on it and my back very rarely ever has any pain. I definitely recommend it.
I got mine for a 6-mat room about 3 years ago from Oriental Furniture and have been quite satisfied with them. They're still basically like new. Nothing's come loose, no noticeable denting except where the kotatsu's legs sit, and even that's not bad. There are a few areas on two of them where the weave is a little too sparse and if you walk on them a lot you can start to see little gaps and need to sort of straighten the grass back out, but it's not serious.
It looks like J-Life is using the exact same product images, though, so better price there for likely an identical product.
My mats came on a pallet off a FedEx semi that pulled up right in front of my house. They had a pallet jack and a lift gate, so the delivery person just rolled the pallet right into the garage. I'm not sure how they'd come to another address. I was a little surprised they even took a semi into my neighborhood.
I seem to remember from decades ago that they were kinda super expensive. Not sure if that is still the case.
One thing to keep in mind is that mattresses and pads that aren't on slats or a box spring need to be moved/flipped regularly to allow them to air out, otherwise they get musty (or worse, moldy).
I personally prefer a platform/slat bed with just a memory foam mattress (6-8 inches thick is more than enough, 12 inches gets kinda ridiculous like a water bed).