Things I Miss About Japan #13: Sunscreen

I'm back home and BOY does it kinda suck.

Shopping isn't what I've grown accustomed to. Not just for clothes, but beauty products and household items in general. One thing I REALLY REALLY REALLY came to love was Japanese liquid sunscreen and even aerosol sunblock, like this stuff:

They're so much lighter and smell much better than American ones. They soak into my skin quickly and leave a very faint scent that only I can smell if I put my arm right up against my nose and inhale. These work just as well as the thick gross stuff we normally use in America.

There's even weird powder sunblock in five fun cloud puff things. It leaves your skin looking like a Stephanie Meyer vampire so I didn't buy one but it's interesting.

I never bothered with sunblock in America is because it STINKS. Everyone within 10 feet of me knows I'm wearing it. On top of that, I feel it on my skin and sweating off AND IT'S GROSS. When I played water polo in high school, I'd purposefully glob that stuff on so I'd be slippery in the water and my opponents couldn't keep a grip on me. It's okay to be stinky and greasy in the pool, just not anywhere else.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I found that Neutrogena sells a watery liquid sunscreen!

I bought a bottle to compare to my favorite Japanese brand. I'll admit I use a lot of Neutrogena acne care and face wash products so I've some brand loyalty going on here, but I honestly haven't seen anything else like this.

Both are compact and purse-friendly. The Nivea one is on sale in Japan for like 300-400 yen, so about $5/bottle. The Neutrogena one was like $11 ugh. I'm no expert at this crazy metric system, but I'm pretty sure milliliters equal the same amount of space or something as grams, so the Nivea one has more sunblockin' goodness in it. Like double. FOR HALF THE PRICE WTF.

AND IT DOESN'T EVEN GO ON THE SAME. The Nivea one is thinner and spreads a lot easier than the Neutrogena one. The Neutrogena sunscreen is far more to my liking than most American sunscreens but it's still icky and kinda smelly and meh. Nivea is on the left, Neutrogena on the right.

Thankfully they both soak in pretty quickly. I couldn't tell a difference between the two once they were dry.

EDIT: I put on quite a bit of the Neutrogena one today and my hands feel chalky. I've washed my hands more than once but it still feels weird. It also feels a bit greasy on my arms, so ew not using this unless I have to.

I guess it's a fair alternative but I LIKE THE JAPANESE STUFF BETTER OKAY. IT'S CHEAPER AND NOT STINKY AND WORKS JUST AS WELL AS THE GROSS STUFF FROM AMERICA.

Miss/Won't Miss #3

Things I'll Miss About Japan #3: Beauty Products I Didn't Know I Needed

Before coming here I had dabbled a little bit in wearing false eyelashes, but I wasn't really good at it and I didn't know anything about the different brands or styles. A year and a half later, I've come to love certain brands and am kinda picky when it comes to lashes.

Some of my boxes.

My current favorites!

I naturally have nice eyelashes. A good coat of mascara will get them to be noticeable and I don't *need* falsies, but they're so fun now! I have to give a shoutout to/place some of the blame on Caroline for this. She gave me a box of lashes she bought but weren't crazy about. I put them on and loved them so much I had my friends buy the same ones and they got obsessed with me.


Another random product I've come to love are powder sheets.

Now that rainy season is giving way to the humidity of summer, there's all kinds of powder sheets at the drug stores. They're like wet naps but they smell good and they make your skin feel powdery smooth and dry. They even have menthol ones to make you feel extra cool~ I have at least two different kinds in my bag right now. When did I start needing these? I don't know.

Things I Won't Miss About Japan #3: The Lack of Health and Beauty Products I KNOW I Need

Despite falling in love with a lot of Japanese make-up and beauty products, I haven't found replacements for everything. I stocked up on concealer and eye shadow primer before I left America, and I still ask my mom to send me Dior mascara (which I could buy here at a 30% price mark-up).

I miss the rows and rows of this stuff at Wal-Mart

I also don't mess around with my face wash, toothpaste, and over-the-counter medication. A few Japanese people have admitted to me that Japanese medications tend to be weaker (they don't go to certain clinics because they think the medication the doctors give is "too strong"), and the few times I have taken Japanese medication it's done squat to make me feel better. I'd rather have some genuine Nyquil sent to me so I can properly knock myself out, thanks.

New 'Do

So a gaijin walks into a hair salon with pretty j-boy staff. She asks the prettiest j-boy there, "Hey, can you take these two completely different hair styles and make ME pretty somehow? And let me use this discount card for half off?"

My hair will never be this long naturally.

Bangs like that are a pain to keep in place throughout the day.

But through some sort of magic, he makes it work.

I may or may not have taken the after photo in a rush to send it to a boy. Heh. Obviously there will be more photos of my hair later. The moms have been complimenting me all week and if I didn't know better I'd say I even got an awkward statement of approval from my male coworker Brohei!

Eiji at DAWS is adorable and talented and made the effort to chat me up, despite my broken Japanese. He'd have a crazy gaijin after him if he spoke any English ;)

Twas the week or so before Christmas...

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope everyone is thoroughly enjoying the holiday, since it's on a Sunday and no one in Japan or America has to work. I certainly enjoyed this view at Waikiki Beach on Christmas Eve.

A while back dearest Marissa decided not to go back to America for Christmas, so we had a little Christmas get-together at her ENORMOUS apartment. Seriously, the company put me in the tiniest little studio and Marissa has this huge 1RK apartment with enough space for a queen sized bed and two burners in the kitchen. TWO!

The girls got me a totally legal copy of TegoMass' newest album, Tetsuya <3 on the cover of the latest EXILE magazine (that I refrained from buying a few weeks ago since I bought the J Soul Brothers cd + dvds), and the Dolly Wink eye shadow that I've been wanting since the summer. 

Tracy and I got Marissa some GANTZ postcards we managed to find in Nakano and some other things she doesn't remember because NINO AND THAT OTHER GUY IN LEATHER SUITS HEEEEY.

Marissa and I got Tracy a Totoro blanket and a bunch of nail polishes. Revlon makes scented nail polishes in Japan, so I got her the pink peach-scented one.

I also brought over this sake that was left for me in the apartment by the last teacher. Drank half the bottle and didn't even feel it! Lame.

Tracy and I also impulsively bought a few Christmas cakes. In Japan people eat regular cake, absolutely no special ingredients whatsoever, at Christmas and call it Christmas cake. We also bought a crepe layer cake which wasn't that good.

And now for some really bad photos! I don't think we managed to take a good one at all.

And a wonderful time was had by all!

I have done nothing of interest lately

Seriously, I haven't done much of anything lately. I've been trying to save money, asking my parents to send me stuff from my closet at home, and generally surviving until Christmas break. SO HAVE SOME RANDOM PHOTOS OF STUFF!

What I've been getting for free from my j-boy:

J-boy and one of his male buddies went to the Girls Award show at Yoyogi Stadium this past weekend. HE GOT TO SEE BECKY LIVE OMG. He *says* he went for special guest Yoshiki, but whatever. He gave me all his free stuff!

Face mask, some type of sanitary napkin underwear (better than tampons???),
face wipes, mouth wash, shampoo/conditioner, j-boy theatre show ads, and folders.

Obviously the most talented one on that poster.

Do I even want to bother translating?

Cutting this up and making a board game!

What I've been reading:

JLPT study guide making a second appearance, more than halfway through The Girl Who Played With Fire, and the New Penguin Parallel Text book is AWESOME. But it opened with a Murakami piece so everything after the first two pages is... meh.

I got my JLPT ticket yesterday, which is super exciting and scary! What the hell am I even doing reading an English book??? Gotta get my butt in gear for some major Nihongo studying!

What I've been drinking:

Honey & Lemon drink! There's a carbonated version that tastes pretty good too, but I think this one is better.

I have an unopened bottle of Pepsi Pink in my fridge and I'm kind of scared to drink it.

What I've been eating:

Dearest Caroline recently told me that vanilla is her number one choice for scented or flavored things. Mine is probably maple, and I didn't realize this until I came to Japan and every maple thing I ever ate or drank or smelled was amazing. They don't have nearly enough maple products back home.

Hopefully I'll get to doing something INTERESTING soon!

Placenta on MY FACE?

This past weekend I had an overnight work thing and I got to meet some of the other foreigners in my company. The girl I shared my hotel room with professed to me her love and undying devotion to her amazing skin care regime, which was made up entirely of products that use placenta extract.

Yes, really!

The way she talked about how absolutely fantastic these products piqued my interest and I started looking for them when I got back home. Apparently these types of placenta extract products are popular in Japan and when I went to Loft, my favorite kill-time-looking-at-stuff store, and I found a few things without much effort:

Sounds like this product wants me to challenge a placenta,
or perhaps challenge my placenta? IDK JAPAN.

Placenta extract collagen mask

I know Caroline SWEARS by collagen masks but I've never tried one, so I bought the uber-awesome placenta extract one to try out. I don't read a lot of Japanese but I can read PLACENTA (lol) and see the face mask outline. Other than that I really don't know *specifically* what this product is supposed to do. I'm sure it'll be great to have baby on my face~

I tried to find similar Western products, but the best Google could give me were a few placenta extract shampoos available on Amazon. If you want to read about some really interesting uses for placenta, search for cookbooks and recipes (heh heh).