4
Feb
Ikea in Funabashi
Topic: Japan 2007
Tags: Japan
This is the first of several occasional posts I plan to write about my time in Japan last year. Although I blogged a lot about my time in Japan as it was happening, I didn’t have time to blog about everything.
Ikea in Funabashi, Japan
About a week after we arrived in Japan last New Years Eve, I was finding it impossible to work comfortably on our rickety dining room table. We were going to be in Japan for only 6 months, so a cheap desk was in order. Where to go for one? I first tried some sayonara sales (expats headed home and selling their stuff) and some used furniture stores (called “recycle shops” in Japan), but didn’t have any luck. The next option is the same one you might think of in the US - Ikea. There are two Ikeas near Tokyo (both built within the last few years), one in Funabashi and one in Kohoku. We decided to head to the one in Funabashi since it’s very close to Tokyo Disneyland. We figured we might catch a glimpse of it as we went by on the 30 minute ride on the Keiyo Line. Eidan munched on Pocky the whole way and got chocolate all over his face, which got a pair of high school girls smiling and giggling at him for quite a while.
Ikea Funabashi is located on the grounds where the LaLaport Skidome (SSAWS) once stood (the massive indoor Skidome represented one of the last gasps of the 1980s Japanese real estate boom, and the dome proved to be financially unsustainable). All I know about Funabashi is what I could see from the train, but it struck me as quite different from other Japanese cities I’ve seen, in that it sprawled - lots of relatively low rise construction spread over a large area. Next to the Ikea is the grim Wakamatsu residential complex, which I believe is public housing. When I say grim, I mean by Japanese standards - the buildings are old and unattractive, but everything is tidy and clean. Across from the Ikea is the massive LaLaport 3 mall, which we didn’t visit, but it’s probably similar to LaLaport 2 in Toyosu (the only mall I’ve ever been to that I actually enjoyed).
What made visiting this Ikea very strange was that it was absolutely identical to the Ikeas I’ve visited in the US. It felt comforting and unnerving at the same time - comforting to be in a familiar environment, but unnerving because it felt really out of place. Visiting a Starbuck’s or a McDonald’s in Japan is just different enough that you don’t get a sensation of deja vu, but not so at this Ikea - it was exactly the same down to the tiniest details, other than the signs being in Katakana.
After an unnervingly, comfortingly familiar meal of Swedish meatballs at the Ikea cafeteria, we quickly found their cheapest desk and desk chair, but since we were so far out from Tokyo the delivery was way too expensive (more than the price of what we were buying). So we put Kai in charge of Eidan’s stroller, Maria handled the chair, and I lugged the desk all the way back on the train. The hardest part was switching lines at Tokyo station, as it’s quite a long walk through the station to the Yamanote Line. It was quite a workout, but that desk and chair served me well for the rest of our time in Tokyo.
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