I had resolved not to write about this one -- mostly because it's something that's already received a ton of media attention (I'm not big on writing about stuff that's already been thoroughly covered by bemused news agencies and armies of sarcastic bloggers and website auteurs), but also because...well, what would the point of it be? This is a "pillow" shaped like the lower half of a kneeling woman; one picture is all it really takes to understand the sheer creepy pathetic weirdness of it. You don't need me to go on about it for a thousand words.

After seeing the thing up close, however (Ant bought one a while back; the infamous pillow is undeniably kitschy, and Ant has a well-documented weakness for expensive kitsch) I felt that it was incumbent upon me to say something about it here: most commentators, I've noticed, have lingered on the admittedly fascinating sociological and psychological aspects of the lap pillow story ("check out what those crazy lonely perverted Japanese men are doing now!") and in doing so have usually neglected to provide their readers with a frank appraisal of the actual pillow itself. So that's what I'll be doing here.





First off: the box it comes in is full of amusing tidbits. Lap pillow owners are advised not to A) splay their entire bodies over it, B) use it as a shoe, C) attempt to spread the legs apart (probably most people in the market for a lap pillow are quick to give this one a try) or D) basically use it in any way inconsisent with the purpose of the product...which is to provide a headrest that simulates the comforting lap of a tiny Japanese woman.

Indeed, "tiny" is the operative word here. As most Japanese women are quite diminutive, I'm inclined to believe that the lap pillow is fairly accurate in terms of size (that is, it correctly replicates the size of a particularly petite Japanese woman's lap) but I'm honestly not too sure, as the shape of the pillow makes it sort of hard to judge. No foolin', though: this is a tiny fake lap. If they modelled this thing after a real girl, she was probably eighty pounds soaking wet.

As for the construction...well, the legs are made out some kind of polyurethane foam; they obviously don't feel like real flesh, but it's probably the closest the designers could come to the real thing without using some exotic compound that would have resulted in the thing costing about a billion dollars. The tight mini-skirt, meanwhile, feels like...well, like a mini-skirt. Ant bought the black-colored variety, but red is also available.





But does it work? Does resting your head on this fake lap make you feel secure and comfortable and contented and safe? I have no idea. I never deigned to rest my head on the thing, partly because doing so would have made me feel incredibly silly and pathetic, but mostly because the legendary Japanese lap pillow stinks to high heaven, and I couldn't bear to place my nose anywhere close to the damn thing. I don't know what the smell is, exactly, but I suspect it's the polyurethane foam stuff: it smells almost like formaldehyde or something, and the odor is overpowering (it's the kind of noxious stench that sticks to your nostrils all day). Factory residue, I'm guessing.

So there you have it: the lap pillow in a nutshell. Here's a couple more pics of the box:

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