-Shop cute Japanese products and cool products from Japan. This cute blog is about Japanese kawaii, kawaii Japan, kawaii fashion, Japanese pop culture and more. It's a kawaii blog from Japan, Japan blog in English by a Japanese girl.

This is the online Japanese – English or English – Japanese dictionary that I use when I write a blog post. (I cannot do without it. So I can easily get stuck with right wordings when I film my Youtube video. How stressfult it is to do this in second language! But I know I can improve it little by little, and I quite like the way to improve it from daily communication with other English-speaking people.)

ALC is a Japanese company engaged in English education or study-abroad programs from Japan to the world. The goodness about this online dictionary named Eijiro that ALC offers is that we can look up the word both in English and in Japanese. Meaning, if you enter Japanese word into the box, the English word that corresponds to the Japanese word will be shown as a result. When you hit English word, vice versa. So you don’t have to switch the box whether it’s from Japanese to English or the other way round. You can use whichever ways!

Another good thing is that we can search the word just like we search by Google. Let’s say I didn’t come up with the word “other way round” but I remembered only “other ??? round” I can just type as “other round” in the search box and hit enter. Then the right word can be found among the results. This also goes with misspellings. For example when I search as “simultanious” they suggest if I mean “simultaneous” but this is not alway working as I wish. :p

If you study Japanese, you can make use of it. But in that case you have to know exact Kanji to enter because they do not recognize the Japanese word, which normally is described in Kanji, written in Hiragana or Katakana. While it looks good as long as you learn corresponding Japanese words from the result of the English word you enter.

Just in case, for those who are unfamiliar with Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, take a look at how to write “kawaii” in Japanese and see that we have 3 ways to write it in Japanese. However, usually one of them is mostly used at most occasions.

Mama + Kid Model
18/APR/2009 on air

Early 20s young mama with little kids have chance to be a parent-child fashion model to some special fashion magazines targeting fashionable mama. These fashion magazines are such as followins, from which you will see how popular mama models can be in Japan!

Mart (http://mart-magazine.com/index_main.html)
SAKURA (http://sakuramama.jp/)
Saita (http://www.saita.net/saita/index.htm)
BLENDA (http://www.blenda.jp/)
I LOVE mama (http://www.fujisan.co.jp/Product/1281683285)
como (http://www.prebabycomo.com/como/index.php)

Momoeri is the top mama model in Japan. She used to be a hostess, then married, and gave birth to her son. But 5 years ago she divorced from her husband to become a single mother. She is only 27-year-old successful charismatic mama model (it’s called “mamamo” with abbreviation) who is as famous as a cover girl to “mama” magazine. Besides, she established an on-line shop of her own. She is a CEO to her company who is also engaged in new product plan. The pink sandals for home usage is from her idea.

Mama models are popular because they do not look like, so to speak, a “mom” as you know from the image of your neighbors. They look really young, fit, and kawaii where you’ll find no air of daily household works and busy child management. The more mama models look gorgeous the more gyaru mama adore them.

You can easily imagine there are many young moms who wanna be like Momoeri or other successful mama models. Mr. Ikki and Beni-chan selected Mrs. Miyazaki and her boy for beautiful mama and kid model feature pages of “mama” magazine. The point for success is to repeat the same color or item between mom and kid.

Reflecting such trend, Harajuku no longer target young people only. These days kid (especially targeting 0 -3 years old) brand shops open in Harajuku one after another. As for the pricing, Mrs. Miyazaki spent 63,000 yen (USD630) in total, which was for herself, and another 20,000 (USD200) for her son.

Beautiful mama should be beautiful from inside and outside.
Inside factor is influencial because the readers (also moms) would feel for them. For example if the readers know how much effort mama model makes to keep their beauty or whatever, anything,
they will be encouraged or energized so that they should do their best to improve themselves too.

Mr.Ikki and Beni-chan visited an apartment where a beautiful mama (bimama, bi=beauty) lives in west Japan. BTW, if you read my post about Japanese houses, this illustrates life of average Japanese people. Small house and small kitchen…Don’t take me wrong I don’t say they are economically-challenged, as you see both parents have jobs. This is average when we live in/near the city area, where houses cost high.

Another mama model to “como” magazine, you’ll see how mama models make every effort to keep themselves fit. She get haircut and haircolor every other month, for 7800 yen with model discount.
3 times a month, she goes belly dance, with each 2100 yen. And every night before sleep, she does face yoga by herself. She does all these things besides household works, parenting, and modeling!

Another example is hand-only model or leg-only model. It’s called parts model in Japan. But she is also working so hard to keep beauty. She shows how to moisture her back of the hand and legs.
For hand, place a tissue (Kleenex) over the back of the hand, spray purified water : lotion = 1:1, cut the tissue along with the fingers, and wait 3 minutes. While waiting, make moisturaizer warm by holding inside palm, then put it over the back of the hand to rub it into the skin. Same lotion or moisturaizer for legs. But legs need aluminum foil to be rolled over before wait for 3 minutes.

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Kirin’s opinion

Momoeri is popular as “age-jo” which was only I knew, but I didn’t know she is successful as a mama model now. (Age-jo is how models are called who work for the crazy-selling agazine “Koakuma Ageha”.) It’s good that we can enjoy being kawaii even after becoming a mom. But on the other hand, it’s not good if a mom is too fashion conscious to pay more attention to education.
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Disclaimer: Tokyo Kawaii TV is a TV program owned and broadcasted by NHK Japan, and has nothing to do with this blog.

***There are archives of episodes listed under the page titled “Tokyo Kawaii TV” that is just located under the title banner of this blog.
***If you want to know the music that was used in the episode, please refer to this page and help yourself to find it by selecting the date when the episode was on air in Japan.

End of July is bon odori (meaning bon dance, as you might know) season in Japan. There are 2 bon odori sites near my house this year. No matter how many years have passed, how our life is advanced with technology, and how Japanese people are westernized, bon odori has been always the same. Same song, same music, same Japanese drums….Peple dance the same way and that’s why things I see there just remind me of my childhood. I feel it is a very Japanese-like event and when I find myself relaxed with some nostalgic feelings and memories, I am feeling myself very Japanese.

Whatever, video is worth a thousand words here. Take a look and you can feel what it’d be like there. Enjoy the image of Japanese summer. It’s too dark and barely visible?! I know that, but indeed it was taken place in the dark. That’s how it is.

What’s surprising me was that Doraemon Ondo was on at both sites. I thought it was only for kids and inside the TV! I remember the song from childhood.

Yakitori (grilled chicken with teriyaki sauce over) and beer from street vendors. How Japanese!