CA travels to Japan for a Rs 40,000 custom pillow to ease neck pain, sparks online debate

Chartered accountant (CA) Vipandeep Kaur is drawing attention on social media. To get relief from neck pain, she travelled to Japan and brought back a special pillow costing about Rs 40,000.

According to Kaur, her work requires her to sit in front of a laptop for hours and she also uses her mobile phone a great deal. These habits affected her neck, and she gradually began to feel pain. Her sleep also began to suffer. She felt it was essential to get restful, comfortable sleep at night after a day's work, so she decided to buy a pillow made to suit the body's shape instead of an ordinary one.

For this she went to a well-known shop named Nishikawa in the Nihonbashi area of Japan. The shop is said to be about 400 years old. There, pillows are made according to the customer's sleeping habits and body shape. First, the customer's neck is measured. Then the body shape, sleeping posture and the amount of support the head and neck need are assessed.

Before the pillow is made, the customer is asked to lie on pillows of different heights. This shows the position of the head and neck while lying down, and the height and support of the pillow are decided accordingly. The pillow is filled with black binchotan charcoal pipe beads. These are small beads, and their shape and quantity are decided according to the neck's needs. In this way the pillow is made to suit the customer's body.

Spending Rs 40,000 on one pillow made Kaur's decision a subject of debate on social media. Defending it, she said it is important to prioritise sleep and comfort. According to her, she earlier did not pay much attention to sleep, but as she grew older she began to feel sleep problems and neck pain. She also said that using a laptop and mobile phone all day affects the neck. She loves sleeping, so she considers the money spent on good sleep a good investment.

After she shared the post, it went viral. It is reported to have been viewed more than three lakh times in just four hours. Some users praised her decision. Many said that spending on good sleep and a healthy lifestyle is fine. Others questioned whether spending Rs 40,000 on one pillow was justified. One user wrote, "How nice it would be if I had that much money too". Another said the expense was worth it. Another user remarked jokingly that had she cut down on her phone habit and switched off the phone before sleeping, she would not have needed to spend so much.