JapanNewbie

HizaMakura

Posted on 22. Dec, 2004 @ 1:02 am by harvey in Culture

I usually stay away from ミーハー updates like this… But, I have the image so whatever…

A friend of mine gave me the heads up about this Japanese product actually. There was a news story about it on BBC News as well. It’s HUGE! I ran into the actual product a few days later in Tokyu Hands in Namba.

Anyway, the Hizamakura (literally “knee-pillow”) is a model of a woman, well… The lower half of a woman anyway… and it is made out of some ultra skin-like material, and it is wearing a skirt… and some underwear.

You can sleep on the knees of the hizamakura to get cozy.

There is a bit of culture behind this though. In Japan, men and women, seem to have this thing about laying their heads on their mothers knees and having their ears cleaned with a Q-Tip. They call it 耳掃除 (mimi souji), or “ear-cleaning”… Gotta love those translations… Anyway, that feeling of lying your head on your mothers’, or girlfriends’ lap and getting your ears cleaned is apparently really really desireable for males as they get older.

Honestly… I don’t get it. But hey, I’m not Japanese.

For a quick grammar lesson… You can do other words with X+makura as well. For example うで枕 (udemakura) for an “arm-pillow”. I heard that a few years ago the same company that makes this
hizamakura made an “boyfriends udemakura” for women as well. What’s next?

Tokyu Hands was sold out of the hizamakura when I was there.

残念。

- Harvey