Happy Hour at Ikea?!

There is an Ikea located about 30 minutes away from be my train in Chiba prefecture. While it isn't as large as the one I'm fond of in Toronto, it's just as grand and brought on a downpour of memories as I wandered through the similar interior setup of the store. My original intentions of going to Ikea was to buy a sofa for my apartment. Even though I'll likely be leaving Japan in the next year or so, I'd really prefer to have a comfortable piece of furniture just to chill out in. Ikea has decent prices and I thought the compactness or "assemble-yourself" properties would definitely be to my advantage.


I decided on the Fothult sofa as it was extremely cushiony and luxurious, with a colour that would match the rest of my interior design at my apartment. Another positive is that until September 30th 2008 it is ¥14,900 down from the original ¥24,900. Everything was going according to plan until Kyle and I got to the marketplace checkout and the Fothult was just too big to carry home. It was already assembled and just had a plastic covering and cardboard protecting it. I considered shipping as an option but unfortunately it isn't really worth the cost if I am just shipping one item. Dammit. For the first time since I got to Japan, I missed having a car.

Kyle testing out his potential purchase. Look how happy he is.

Kyle on the otherhand is going to con one of this bosses into driving him to Ikea and driving his sofa back to his apartment. Japanese people are too nice to say "no", but Kyle is balls out taking advantage of him! In any case Kyle likely needs a sofa more, especially since the one he has in mind (Solsta) folds out into a bed. I however do have a bed to sleep on since the previous teacher working here left me her old one.


On another note, here's more proof that Japan adds their own magic touch to things to make a great thing even better. A trip to Ikea isn't complete without eating something at the restaurant/cafe. While we weren't in time for $1 breakfast, we still had a great lunch. As we were sitting and eating I noticed this ridiculously awesome ad on the table. Happy Hour at Ikea?! ¥100 yen per bottle ($1 Canadian). Nooo way! The Japanese touch definitely wins.