-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.

entry #10
Laura

Hello Kitty Christmas light set that I got from Sanrio. There are 12 lights on the string, but this is how one of the lights look close up. I have it hanging in my study all year long

Chibi Spiderman bubble bath. This came in a set, but I like Spiderman the best. I just refill the bottle when the bubble bath is out. It makes me feel like a kid taking a bath.

Mini Totoro picture from Neil Jam (Neiljam.com) The artist makes tons of portraits of superheroes, cartoon characters, and other pop icons. Totoro is one of my childhood faves, and I just had to him!

Hello Kitty headphones and Hello Kitty CD player. I like listening to Shakespeare on CD and I can never get rid of my HK CD player… How can I? It’s too cute! My sister got me these adorable headphones for Christmas.

Sock Monkey Mittens. My husband surprised me with these mittens as a present. They are oh so warm and just ridiculously adorable.

Laura has just started blogging. (Well it’ll be some time passed by the time this post is released, though)
Follow her blog if you like her kawaii collections!!

Thank you Laura! I personally fell in love with the Chibi Spiderman bubble bath! (note: “Chibi” means short or small in Japanese.) He is so cute!

How interesting to see how people (TKE readers) love something kawaii! How about you? Share with us your kawaii collections. (Please read this page before you join the project. Thanks!)

Giving up a trip to Miyazaki (Japan) and Egypt one after another, I only went to Hakone to seek for onsen to have some rest finally. All I wanted to do was to rest and regain energy, I didn’t even need a company, which means either of my friend or husband. You see how I was tired… But another reason was this: I was afraid to make it happen to me again that this trip is canceled after all for some reason. I only booked it a few days ago. I guess it was traumatic to me that both Miyazaki (due to volcanic eruption) and Egypt (antigovernment demonstration, as you know) turned out to be exactly the places to be avoided for travelling. I mean, why only two without three? In case my 3rd time is blocked…I didn’t want to involve anyone. (*x*)

But it was nice Hakone was not against me. *relief*
Hakone is not that far actually. Normal train trip is OK enough to me. (I didn’t pay extra to get on Romance Car.) Hakone Tozan Tetsudo is a minor train that runs slowly from mountain to mountain.

There were only 4 stations but it took about 30 minutes finally to arrive at Kowakidani station where my hotel was.

There was a pick-up shuttle service from the hotel. I forgot to take a hotel facade picture but here’s the hotel’s website and below pictures are the single room where I stayed.

I prefer bed to futon because I feel futon is just too hard for my back. But I wished to have my meal brought to my room especially when I’m travelling alone. (To enable that I had to choose Japanese tatami room and futon instead though.) But this time I should not complain anything. I’m only happy that it was not cancelled by any means. ^ ^;

Actually too much of Japanese meal was another worry. I normally do not select a hotel that serves Japanese cuisine both at dinner and breakfast. I was worried if I was dying for bread and western meals badly, so I ate pasta and sandwich before and after the meals I was given there. It looks like I was OK. lol

I wanted nothing but bathing in onsen and relax…

There were 3 types of rotenburo (outdoor onsen) and 2 of them I entered.

People will see whether the private rotenburo is open or engaged by checking this board. I wanted to try all of the 3 private rotenburo baths but 1 of them was engaged when I checked it.

The first one was this.

I even took a video with my camera. (Blogging is half work half fun, it’s always in my mind. :p)

Another one I tried.

Inside…

I wanted to wait till disk but it needed too much time and I gave up. I had a enough time to do onsen hopping one after another before dinner time both at private/public onsen and outdoor/indoor onsen. (Of course no pictures from public onsen, haha!)

I once dreamed about working in an onsen hotel to be able to bathe in onsen every night. But then I imagined how relaxing it is after all when bathing in a work place… Well, never mind my rambling. BTW, if you don’t mind spending more (25000yen or more per person), you can choose to stay in a room that has a private onsen in a terrace of your room. But usually such private onsen allocated in each room has normal hot water, not onsen water. You can easily see the difference how normal hot water and onsen hot water is different. Onsen hot water keeps us warm longer, while normal hot water from the tap does not.

The dinner was very good, but I totally missed my company. I didn’t feel lonely until this time but finally I wished if my husband were with me.

I had some grilled meat, fish and vegetables and so many dishes I couldn’t eat everything…

I like bathing and onsen a lot. I enjoyed onsen in the next morning, which was so good! I guess I entered 6 different onsen while I was staying there.

The breakfast was also so much to me. I could not eat anything until 3pm after I had this at 8am or so.

Eating alone was a bit lonely but excluding that, I was able to rest well and had some refresh from everyday’s life, which I know is nothing compared to a vacation in Egypt though. But I decided I should take someone with me to have more fun meal time and memory to share with from next time, instead of being scared too much of the possibilities that my plan’s blocked just like Miyazaki and Egypt.

Hope this post gives you some image of onsen hotels in Japan.

entry #9
Kirin (me!)

Finally it’s my turn! ^ ^;
The first one is a colorful decoration with mixture of pom-pons I bought from 100yen shop and Decotti.

This is a photo frame I bought at a museum shop in Tokyo long time ago. Its back is already broken. It cannot hold a picture properly any longer. The photo could drop suddenly. (lol) Speaking of the photo, it’s a photo from Prague (the Czech Republic). Every time I look at it, I think of travelling in Europe. You see how much I love travelling!

It’s part of my interior. I bought it almost 8 years ago before I moved to the place I live in now. I like Kilim, but I don’t like very new ones with too rough surface. As for this one, the texture doesn’t really matter because I don’t place myself on it.

I love Hungarian souvenirs! They are so cute. My friend from Hungary brought this cute little souvenir from Hungary when she visited Japan. I really liked it.

This is also a souvenir that I bought by myself when I visited Amsterdam in 2009.

It’s a handmade necklace I bought recently in Nakameguro, actually when I bought the vegetable cake. I wish to make things like this by myself, but my problem is I don’t have time to do that for now. It’s one of the wish-to-do lists in the future. ^ ^; haha…

Oh, already 7th item! How soon!! Then let me finish my post with Rilakkuma and Korilakkuma plushies. To tell you the truth, I have not paid enough attention to them since I started to live with Pi-chan.

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