-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.

I’d like to share with you kawaii things and stores I found in Australia.
This is a set of tea towel that I found in K-mart. These towels are so kawaii to me!! I didn’t expect I can find such kawaii towels in a discount store like K-mart.

Speaking of K-mart, and some supermarkets in Australia, I found it’s really cool that they have self check-out service! Unfortunately in Japan, we don’t have such system. I’ve been wondering for many years why we can’t check-out without a person at a cashier. Japan is so advanced in terms of technical devices, then why not? Australia already has this system. We don’t even have an express lane for the people who only want to pay for a few items at a cashier, which is also very inconvenient. It seems that Japanese supermarkets and discount stores should learn more from those overseas…

I found some nice interior furnishing stores in Australia. They carry some kawaii goods.

Also, I thought there were many stores that sold bed linens. I found many kawaii bed linens but most of them seemed to be queen sized and all the pillow seemed to be the same size. I’d change bed linens several times if I lived in Australia. They have a lot of color variations and patterns, and most of them were kawaii!!

I really enjoyed browsing kawaii interior goods even though I couldn’t buy them to bring back home. But healthy products are also quite attracting to me. I’ve been a fan of propolis toothpaste since I brought back 1 small toothpaste from Sydney in 2009. I’ve searched online if I can buy similar product in Japan but it was quite expensive. So I was willing to purchase some propolis toothpaste this time to bring back home and use for the next 12 months or more. haha!

One of the reasons that I like Australia is that healthy products can be easily purchased there, and not that expensive compared with the case purchased in Japan. Actually it is not easy to find such natural items as Moo Goo cream or paw paw cream in Japan. Thursday Plantation products are also very interesting to me.

Finally, I was quite surprised to find a Japanese QP mayo at a supermarket (I forgot if it was Woolworth or Coles), because I remember I asked one of Japanese friends who was working at a Japanese restaurant to share with me some Japanese mayo back in 1999-2000 when I was living in Australia with working holiday visa. I guess I missed Japanese mayo badly at that time…^ ^;;

This is something interesting, and not relevant to something kawaii, but I also was quite surprised to see a newscaster look like this. I mean her hair style! It looked like a hedgehog or something. I don’t think such unique hair style is seen from Japanese news casters. I think we have more strict rules and dress code in Japan. Also, it’s sad aged female newscasters are not on TV difficult to stay on TV in Japan. Most of them are young and they have to leave the company before they turn 30 to become freelancer. There are only a few of them who can continue their work as they get old. (Sorry, my explanation was confusing, there are some aged female reporters on TV in Japan but it’s more difficult for them to stay on TV than aged male reporters.)

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Kawaii Makeover
20/NOV/2010 on air

It’s rumored that Silk-san is 50 years old. Her body and skin look so young that they do not look like the ones belonging to someone in her 50s. Silk-san debuted as a comedian 25 years ago. But she became popular especially since she released her semi-nude picture calendar before she turned 50.

What is the secret to sustain beauty and youth? She’s kept doing this facial exercise for over 10 years and 50 times of “kaeru fukkin” (=frog sit-up) everyday for 13 years. That changed her completely.

At a male exclusive esthetic salon there is a man who spends 1 million yen for esthetic treatment in 3 years. They are called “Bibo-o” (In kanji, it’s 美貌 which means good looks and 男 which means men. It’s just a coined word.). Most of them are engaged in hospitality or entertainment business or sales. The boom started from a popular men’s magazine called “Men’s Club“.

Toga-san, 43-year-old chief editor of the magazine, locates perfume and skin care goods on his desk to use for himself. He uses a steamer to moisturize his skin. He doesn’t feel like seeing people when his hair or skin condition is bad. So how is his house then? He owns more than 50 kinds of cosmetics. He had already epilated his beards and his nasal hair. Bibo-o is not just a good-looking guy but they are aiming to be a beautiful man. They can communicate with women well thanks to the common topic about beauty.

A 27-year-old man wants to be a Bibo-o. This continues at the latter part of the episode.

There is a blog written by a 18-year-old high school girl Arishan that has 70,000 daily page view. The theme is “People can change!” You will never see these are the same person. She writes how she has changed in the past 3 years since she was suffering from her plump face when she was 15. It’s in the bathroom where she updates her blog.

She has a makeover notebook that helped change her from a plump 15-year-old girl to a Dokumo. The point is to aim for a high goal. She set a goal as “to become a sales assistant for a shop in Shibuya 109″. Well, it was not Shibuya but she successfully became a shop sales assistant for a popular brand COCOLULU in her home town Utsunomiya. She aimed to be a Dokumo for some gyaru fashion magazines such as egg, ranzuki and popteen and she achieved that over 30 times.

Arishan says this notebook changed her life.

The sales floor of Yamada Denki LABI in Shinjuku is huge. They have more than 1500 kinds of beauty goods and machines there. The sales increased by 10% from last year.

Then how is the life of a woman who is obsessed with beauty machines? She uses the steamer to remove makeup, while she is checking emails. She locates the steamer near her pillow and turn the switch on so it steams her face while she is sleeping. In the morning she uses the face massager while she is selecting clothes to wear that day. Before she leaves home, she turns on the cleaning robot so it should finish cleaning her apartment before she comes back home.

Busy Japanese people cannot use time for just one task. Beauty can be maintained while we do something different. It’s called “Nagara Kaden boom” in Japan, which means to operate machines while doing something else. Why Panasonic noticed this trend and demand? They surveyed “When and what occasion do people want to do something for improvement of their beauty?” And most of the answers were “while we are sleeping!”. They produced a beauty machine with which we can still make use of our limited time. Panasonic also opened a rental powder room CLUXTA in Ikebukuro where users can rent the space and their beauty machines as well as cosmetics for 300-1000yen per visit. Most of the users are the students or workers in their 20s.

Kawakita-san, 27-year-old store manager, wants to be a Bibo-o.
The Bibo-o guy gives him instructions how to wash face for a start. He says it’s necessary to wash the face with a good lather, followed by facial scrub. Then facial pack is for 10-15 minutes. Then use a facial roller to massage the face. Lip care shouldn’t be forgotten.
Kawakita-san is encouraged to keep following this way and he even added sit-up spontaneously.

Serina-chan wants to be a Gyaru. Arishan tells her how to use the makeover notebook properly. How much weight/size/body fat rate do you want to gain? Then what do you want to do when you achieve the goal?

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Kirin’s opinion:
Isn’t it too much that men have to remove their beards or nasal hair? Being hygienic is OK to me, but I personally don’t require this much for men. How about you? As for the makeover notebook, I like this idea. Actually I truly believe we can achieve most of the goals when we aim them in a correct way. In my case, I will make a big vision board with full of travel pictures and hang it in a living room. As you know, I want to be a world traveler who travel all the time and works from anywhere online.
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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.

Yay! Another My Kawaii post from a TKE reader! So today’s entry is…

entry #20
Vermillion

My name is Vermillion and I’ve always loved to collect cute things since I was younger, especially miniature items.

This is a small part of my makeup and fashion magazine collection. I first got interested in Japanese fashion when I was around 14 or 15. I was at a hair salon and they had a copies of Cawaii! (now defunct) and Popteen and I liked the hairstyles they showed. Ever since then I’ve enjoyed flicking through similar magazines and my interest has expanded into their fashion and makeup ^^ I guess if you can’t tell, I like Tsubasa’s products very much. I like her look and the packaging is very cute!

I also love cute stationery! When I was around 8 I started to collect stickers and ever since then I have always been buying cute stationery whenever I can haha. I used to collect miniature erasers and memopads but since I started university I prefer to buy folders. I think it’s a nice way to brighten up my study area. I think cute and practical is the way to go! :^)

As I said before I love to collect miniature items. I especially love Konapun since it’s a fun toy which can make mini realistic dishes Konapun is powder which you add with water and by mimicking what one would usually do when they cook food, you can make a fake meal or dessert! It’s really fun to make though it is becoming more expensive and harder to find online since I think Bandai is ceasing production >_< I've always had a fascination with fake food which is why this is like the perfect toy XD

Along with collecting miniature items, I like cute figurines, soft toys and dolls ^^ I know some people find dolls creepy but I find them fun to dress and photograph. My favourite company is BlueFairy . I think their dolls give off a cute and innocent vibe which I think is endearing.

So that’s my brief introduction to my collection. I hope it was interesting to read about!

Thank you Vermillion for participating in the My Kawaii Project. The drink CALPICO is originally named as CALPIS in Japan (it’s a Japan born beverage) but you know, in English it sounds like….^ ^;;*you know!* That’s why its name is changed as CALPICO overseas. I’m surprised to see you have so many Japanese stuff there! Even Konapun…and all those cosmetics that are familiar here…^ ^

Follow her blog “March Rabbits” or twitter if you like this post!

Anyone is interested in writing a My Kawaii post just like she did? It’s a good chance to share your kawaii world to the rest of TKE readers around the globe!