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DEFINITION: Runway (noun) A strip of land with a covered surface used by aeroplanes (US English = airplanes) for take off and landing; Futon (noun) A soft mattress used for sleeping on.

Runway futon (noun) A futon put down/laid out in a tiny area of hastily-cleared floor space in a messy one-room apartment.

EXAMPLE SENTENCE: “It’s about time I tidied up my apartment – I had to settle for the runway futon again last night”

EXPLANATION: One of the downsides of living in a one-room apartment is the lack of storage space, resulting in either a sparse, minimalist lifestyle or over-crowding and untidiness. In my case, I’m a bit of a ‘hoarder’ and rarely throw anything away (apart from rubbish/garbage of course).

This means that no matter how good my intentions are, or how many space-saving devices I buy from the ¥100 shop or home centre, my apartment is simply impossible to keep tidy. I start leaving things out on the carpet so I know where they are, these things keep accumulating, and before long there are piles of paper and junk all over the place. I’ve spoken to other people who live in one-room apartments and it seems this is a problem shared by many of them, especially since most people sleep on futons not beds.

Unlike western futons - soft mattresses that can’t be folded and are laid out permanently on a wooden frame, making them quite similar to beds – Japanese futons are thinner, softer mattresses that are designed to be laid out on the floor at night for sleeping then removed in the morning, aired out in the sunshine, and stored in a closet while not in use.

Most Japanese people practice this routine daily, but for foreigners used to sleeping on beds it’s a ritual that’s not without complication. For myself and friends I’ve spoken to about this, the biggest problem with folding your futon up and putting it away every day is that piles of junk tend to encroach quickly on the free floor space where the futon was the night before. As a result, when it’s bedtime and you take your futon out of storage there’s no room to lay it out on the carpet.

This is where the ‘runway futon’ comes in. The ‘runway futon’ involves clearing a ‘landing strip’ in amongst the junk (much as you would if you were clearing a forest to make a landing strip for a plane to land), simply pushing things aside until there’s a rectangular area of floor space just big enough for you to lay out your futon and ‘touch down’ for a good night’s sleep.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 9:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Articles in English, English Language and Western Culture, My Favourite Slang. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.