I wrote recently of the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, and the instant Westernization it prompted. The government encouraged efforts to make foreigners feel at home. One was directed toward ryokan and many of them installed Western-style toilets and created a few rooms with Western beds. The beds were rarely the tourist's choice. They wanted to try the Japanese way with futon, but this was balanced by some Japanese who at that time had never slept on a bed and wanted a Western experience. I remember one room that I saw with a bed. Actually, a guest would have to crawl in because it completely filled the small space allotted to it. I don't know how anyone tucked in the sheets or smoothed the bedspread, but the ryokan owner was pleased, feeling it was a good investment in promoting international relations.

Thirty-six years later, how furnishings have changed. There have been many adaptations. One is heated carpets; many Japanese now have Western carpets in their residences but heating them is a Japanese innovation. Western plumbing fixtures no longer require "how to use" stickers. Instead, they have been given extra features, and we now have Japanese Washlet models. Beds, too, are now a common choice which prompted a letter from a Japanese reader. For years she has gone through Akabanebashi on her way to work and had often admired the display windows of a bed company at that Minato-ku intersection. She often thought she would go there to select furniture when she got married. Now that she is making plans for her wedding, the window displays are no longer there. What happened to that company, she asks.

That company is Simmons and it has moved. The showroom windows are now at an even busier intersection, where Hibiya-dori and Harumi-dori meet, on the first floor of the Hibiya Park Building, phone (03) 3212-6270. (Some people call it the American Pharmacy Building.) The displays are so well designed that people sometimes ask if they can buy the complete setting, even to the realistic artificial flowers in vases with realistic artificial water. Simmons is well known for its Beautyrest mattresses featuring springs that react individually to body weight, so balanced that bowling pins set up on a mattress do not fall if a ball is tossed on the bed. Of course you aren't likely to toss a bowling ball on your bed, but a more practical test is that if one person turns over, another person in the same bed will not be aware of any motion. There is even a room where you can see how the weight of your body is distributed on the mattress on which you lie.