Hey Tohno-chan, I need help deciding on a pillow. A rather big birthday of mine is coming up and instead of an iPhone or a smart watch or some other crap I told my family I want something to fix my awful sleep. I'm quite a cuddlebug so a dakimakura is what I've been thinking about, but my family insists on an orthopedic hybrid of a memory foam main pillow and a 'wedge' pillow from a telemarketing store to go between my knees. I trust the battle-tested market of NEET accessories much more than any 'ergnomic' stuff but buying and shipping a proper daki over here is crazy expensive in comparison so I need to be absolutely sure it will be a good choice. Anybody here with experience, especially with Dakimakuri's inner pillows, can give some feedback on how durable they are, and whether they clump easily? Alternatively I could try getting a 'backup husband' type pillow as it's so called on online stores here but I only found one sold by a vendor I don't trust, they routinely underfill their normal pillows with low-quality stuffing.
Dakimakuri is pretty good, though I have no point of comparison. I've been using one of their inners for about a year now and it's still very nice and good to hug. They come with extra stuffing as well. I can't say it's actually good for sleeping, however. I rarely fall asleep cuddling my daki, and when I do, I wake up not long after with my arms being numb from poor circulation. Better for before you go to sleep and lazing around in bed in my experience. Your mileage may vary depending on your cover.
>orthopedic hybrid of a memory foam main pillow Those are terrible. For one foam outgasses, I can't see how people are willing to put their nose right next to one. Ergonomically memory foam is a scam, buckwheat pillow is the way to go: it provides the same benefit of a "conforming" thing but crucially it actually locks into position once you achieve the right shape. That locking into position helps keep you properly aligned. It is good for people who e.g. had TMJ or teeth clenching issues, because it will prevent you from gradually shifting your head down and putting pressure on your teeth or TMJ, compared to a memory foam pillow which will accommodate any change and hence lead to that issue. The only real downside is that if you do need to make a sleeping posture adjustment you have to get used to "beating" your pillow into shape, but soon it becomes second nature and you can do it literally in your sleep. >[on daki versus main + wedge] I don't have a daki but assuming you are a slide sleeper, then probably main + wedge is better for actual sleeping. For one, a full buckwheat daki would be bloody expensive and the weight of that on top of your arms would make sleep annoying. But more generally with a daki the only sleeping posture it allows is one cuddling it. You don't have much freedom in your arm position, which is not a good thing. And shifting from left to right side becomes more tedious because you have to transfer the entire pillow. buckwheat pillow + regular pillow wedge is the way to go in my opinion. The wedge can literally just be one of those thin square couch pillows, no need to be fancy. If you want you can get a daki to put on the edge of the bed or something to use occasionally.
>>42268 >But more generally with a daki the only sleeping posture it allows is one cuddling it. That's kind of an advantage for me, whenever I get sleep paralysis or nightmares I always wake up to having slept on my back. That, and a numb hip. >And shifting from left to right side becomes more tedious because you have to transfer the entire pillow. (...) The wedge can literally just be one of those thin square couch pillows, no need to be fancy. Yeah, that's what I'm using right now, but I keep kicking it off or otherwise losing it as I roll around. Having to look around in the dark half-asleep is so bad wrestling just one gigantic pillow to the other side can't be worse. Thanks for your input on memory foams though, I could feel something was fishy about it. I'll look into buckwheat, never heard of it before.
Yeah back-sleeping tends to lead to more nightmares, not really sure what's the physiological explanation for this, I think it's somehow related to breathing being harder when you're on your back due to airway collapse or something. It shouldn't lead to a numb hip though... Well either way sleeping posture is something you could possibly train mentally. But at least I tend to move around during sleep a lot, so a daki doesn't work for me on those grounds. You could probably note your sleeping habits and see if you tend to move around a lot when you sleep or not, to see if the daki could work for you.
What I was always wondering about, is that couldn't you just order a nicely printed outer layer and fill it up with smaller pillows? Would save a tons of money, I think.
>>42271 The one weird trick that daki manufacturers don't want you to know. Big pillow _hates_ him! Outside the issue of having a nonuniform filling which could probably be worked around by choosing the right type of "smaller pillows", I guess it probably would work.
Alright, so a follow up on this one. I actually found a pillow vendor that sold body pillows with regular old polyesther in standard 160x50 so I got that one. It arrived today. It's pretty light, feels about 2kg which is pretty far from Dakimakuri inners, but it's still pretty high and is very much stuffed with the material. Going to see how it works out and report my findings in a few days.
>>42351 Unless it's against some kind of rule about advertisement or such I wouldn't mind you sharing the vendor.
It's been a few days and I got to say I don't regret what I bought. Took a bit of experimenting to get a good setup going, and while I'm not sleeping like a log all the time still, it's much better than before. Once I can afford it I'll definetly invest in a proper dakimakura later down the line, but until then, this regular old white pillar is basically perfect. Thanks for your help, Tohnons. >>42354 Thanks, but I'd rather not. They specialize in 'orthopedic' (read: oddly shaped) pillows and they don't ship outside of my country as far as I am aware.
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