Japan: Thanksgiving in Japan

Being an expat you tend to miss a lot of things from your home country, in my case the USA. Aside from being able to buy things cheaper, I always miss the food. Sadly its not always the healthy food, for example I would LOVE something from Jack in the Box, Chick Fil-A, or Taco Bell right about now.

One of the biggest food holidays back home is Thanksgiving. Now imagine living in a country where turkey is hard to comeby and has to be special ordered. That is what it is like in Japan, but thanks to the internet I too have been able to celebrate Thanksgiving in various ways for the past 5 years.

This year we celebrated at our friends house as it is larger than ours. Here are some pics from our celebration.


Our baby turkey wasn't quite defrosted yet, so he took a bath/swim in the sink for about 30-45 minutes. If you are in the market for a baby turkey you can find one online at The Meat Guy.

Finally the baby turkey made it into the tiny oven!

While we waited we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Thanks to the wonderful person who put it on bittorent so we could download it!

Is it done yet? The verdict was YES!

Our spread, minus the desserts which were in the fridge.

Everyone getting ready to eat!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! It's hard to believe it is almost December, I am so not ready for Christmas yet!

Contest Win!

So this year I have been unusually lucky, which is odd because under the Japanese ideas for a person of my age I am supposed to be experiencing one of the worst years of my life. Maybe I am defeating the odds, I like to think so. One of my favorite blogs Mai and Kat Oshaberi had a contest for their followers in October and Mai drew my name as one fo the lucky winners. I got my package a few weeks ago, but I jsut got the time to sit down and properly write a blog post and take pictures of all the spoils.

Let me first say that Mai (and Kat) were very generous to their blog readers with this contest and I am glad to have been able to take part in it. It was definitely a fun scavenger hunt. So lets see what Mai included in my lucky bag.


All of the following items were included in the TokiDokiesque bag, which looks like it was handmade. Very cute!


Gokunobi Mascara by Canmake

Victoria's Secret Beauty Rush Lip Gloss

The Body Shop cheek & face powder in Chestnut

Lancome neutral quad

Victoria's Secret Garden lotion in Pure Seduction

Stilla Pretty in Paris Pallete

Jill Stuart emook

Thank-you so much Mai and Kat! I can't wait to really start using these items! More reviews to come. If you don't already read Mai and Kat's blog, you should check it out here.

It's time to give thanks....

As it is Thanksgiving day in my home country, I would like to take this time to give thanks. I am of course thankful for my family, friends, and health, but I am also thankful to have taken the initaitve to start this blog and make new friends from it. Thank you to everyone who reads my blog!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Exercise: Hot Yoga

Earlier this year a hot yoga studio opened up near my house and I was very curious to try it out as I had done bikram yoga once before when I lived in the states and really liked it. For whatever reason, I didn't get around try taking a trial lesson till 9/26, I think it may have been because when it was still extremely hot outside my desire to do yoga in a hot room was very low. However now I am doing hot yoga 3-4 times a week and I am really enjoying it. I will be the first to admit its not easy and you will sweat a lot, but the feeling you get afterwards is really nice. For those of you who are not familiar with what hot yoga or bikram yoga is, it involves doing the following 26 postures in the picture below twice in a room that is heated to 105F with about 40% humidity for a total of 90 minutes. For me this has proven to be an exercise that I enjoy and makes me feel good. In addition to this, one 90 minute session of this yoga burns up to 800 calories!



What is everyone else doing to keep in shape and lose some of those extra kilos/pounds/inches before the holidays?

Bath: Tis the season for Lush!

Around the end of last month I started to see a lot of blog posts about the Christmas holiday items arriving at Lush. I had checked my local store at the time and they didn't have them in yet. About a week ago, I went back and low and behold its now Christmas in Lushland! As the weather at night is getting colder and colder, I decided to pick up a few items to use in my bath at night. I got the following bath bombs and bubble bars.


Cinders ($3.95USD)
ビビディ・バビディ・ブー [バスボム] (¥450)



Christmas Eve Bubble Bar ($6.25USD)
クリスマスイブ [バブルバー] (¥650)


The Boog ($6.95USD)
雪だるまのニューイヤー [バスボム] (¥500)



Gingerbread House Bubble Bar ($6.25USD)
ジンジャークッキーハウス [バブルバー] (¥700)

I am definitely in need of something like this to get me in the holidays spirit. There is only a little more than a month till Christmas and despite all of the stores being decked out I am nowhere close to being in the holiday mood yet. Hopefully these help to get me out of the "I'm not going to be in the US for xmas this year" blues.

What are you staying warm with this fall/winter?

Japan: Pocky and Pretz day!

Most people in the world have heard of Pocky or some other variation of it, but did you know there is an official day for Pocky?
Every year the people of Japan celebrate pocky and pretz day on 11/11, which is easy for me to remember as it is also my fiance's birthday. The first time we celebrated his birthday together there was a huge Pocky & Pretz event in Shinjuku and we got free Pocky and Pretz that day. This year as part of his birthday celebration we went to all of the convenience stores near our house and to two supermarkets and managed to round up all of the Pocky currently for sale in Japan! Here is our Haul! Thankfully we only oppsed once and bought one twice.



What are some of your favorite snacks?

Happy Pocky day!!
Here is one of my favorite Pocky commercials! Its a little old, but cute!

Going Going Gone...

With the holidays coming up, I have tried to keep my spending to a minimum. So because of this, I have actually started using the products that I have at home. Here are a few of the items that I recently finished up and my thoughts on them.


First up is the Super Sensitive Washing Foam from Dr. Ci Labo. I actually bought a sample set from them a few years ago but never bothered to use this cleanser as I was using another one at the time. I had bought the kit to try the collagen gel by Dr. Ci Labo. I recently went through all of my products and found this and decided to use it. I really liked it, it foamed really nicely and left my skin feeling very soft and smooth. It also didn't break me out as some facial cleanser can do. Would I buy this again? The answer is yes, but since I am currently trying to use up things that I have it won't be for a while. Dr. Ci Labo prices can also be a bit more on the expensive side so I am not sure if the full size is a price I want to pay. Overall I give this product a two thumbs up!


Next is the Tee Tree Body Wash from The Body Shop. This actually came in a set I bought from The Body Shop that also included their Tee Tree Makeup cleansing wipes, which I will write about in another blog. After using this whole bottle of body wash, I discovered two things. A) THe feeling of Tee Tree is refreshing, but B) I don't like the smell of Tee Tree! AS this was the only body wash I had at home it was easy to use, but I don't think I will repurchase it based on point B. I do like The Body Shop Body Washes though, so thats not to say I won't buy from them again in the future.


This next item is a free sample I got in the mail after reading Nic Nic's post on it. It the Cellnique Skin Action Sebum Gel. After reading Nic Nic's review and finding out that I could get a free sample of this item I signed up immediately, especially since I have been experiencing some nasty breakouts on my chin. It took about a month or so for this sample to arrive and it lasted me about 5 days. From my 5 days of usage I really liked this product and noticed that my breakouts on my chin were clearing up, I just wish I had more to use. If I was in a spending mode I would definitely order the fullsize of this and see what it does for me in a longer than 5 day trial.


My last item is the Vitamin C serum by Avalon Organics. I was reading up on how to prevent aging (its never too early to start in my opinon) and I came across a 4-step system that included using sunscreen, a retinol based serum, a good cleanser, and this vitamin C serum. I ordered this online since I wasn't able to find one in Japan. It lasted me about 6 months and I noticed that while using it before applying my makeup that my skin seemed to glow more. As this is supposed to prevent aging, I can't really say if it works 100% or not since well I am not noticing aging I suppose its doing something. I am currently looking for a replacement for this as I have run out. I saw one at the body shop on sale, has anyone tried this one?

So thats it for this going going gone post, I plan to write more of these in the future since I am hoping to use up more products.
What are products that you have been using alot more?

Big News!

If you follow me on twitter, you can probably already guess what this post is going to be about, if not well then let me get to it. As I stated in my OOTD : Anniversary style, my BF and I recently celebrated our 3rd year of being together. What I didn't mention is that on that special evening my boyfriend proposed! That's right, we are now engaged! I couldn't mention anything here because we were waiting to tell our friends at a party on 11/5, well that time has passed and I just got my ring last night! So here are a few pictures from that night and of my ring!

Japan : The NEW Haneda International Terminal

After a very busy and fun Friday night, my BF and I decided to spend our rare weekend day off together exploring the new international terminal at Haneda airport (aka Tokyo International Air Terminal TIAT). This airport just recently added this international terminal and since has become a popular tourist spot. Previously the only international airport in the Tokyo area was Narita and that is about 1-3 hours away from our house depending on how you go there. This new airport is just about 30 minutes away, which is quite convenient. Overall I had a lot of fun walking around all the areas open to non-passengers, my only wish was that we were going somewhere too. Here are some of the pictures we too, sorry about the p¥bad quality they were taken with my phone.

This is the Edo style area of the shopping, it includes a a tea garden and various shops.




After looking around this area, we went out to the observation deck. When we went out there it was packed with many women looking for the Arashi jet. Sadly I didn't see it and thus there is no picture of it here to share with you. :(




The shopping area near the observation deck is broken into two areas, the cool zone and the hot zone which each have various stores. The Hot Zone had a huge Hello Kitty shop that even had a Hello Kitty sweets section.







Just as we were about to leave the sun was starting to set and we saw a beautiful sunset!



Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I hope to post more soon, I have lots of good things to write about!