Japan Trip 2014 Part 2

Date: July 2 2014
Destination: Tokyo Skytree and a little wandering

If you've checked out our instagram, you'd've seen us post this agessss ago! If you haven't, check us out here!

Onigiri of some sort and some cold bottled tea was our staple breakfast for a lot of the time when we weren't at a hotel that provided food--at the end of the trip, a friend of our's said she didn't want to see another onigiri for a long time LOL

It's pretty cheap from the convenience store; you can buy it both for less than 250yen in total.

We decided to walk from our hotel to Tokyo Skytree, which thankfully wasn't too far, because the day was so hot. Any time we weren't in the shade or there wasn't a breeze it was stifling. 

Luckily, the walk there was incredibly pretty and peaceful. We went through this long green park that had trees and a stream and all sorts of people passing by. Grannies, men on bikes, a dad and son catching a bugs with nets, young school kids with their teachers running around in the heat...

But finally, we made it to the bottom of Tokyo Skytree. We saw this cute panda costume sitting by the store and the lady so kindly helped us take a photo with the panda. We felt pretty bad for not buying something from her store D: 

Something cool in Japan; their recycling. THIS ISN'T EVEN IT'S FINAL FORM. This is a quick taste of what their recycling is like; everything is separated for efficient recycling.

This is taken across the river from Tokyo Skytree. It was so green and pretty, and even though we decided against going up the Skytree, it was really worth exploring outside of it.

It was around tanabata when we were in Japan, so everywhere you could write wishes on paper and tie them up. If you check out our instagram here you can take a look at another picture that K took.

The photos below were taken from inside the mall at the base of the Skytree. The decorations were so cute and colourful ^U^

The two pictures above are fake food! Pretty impressive huh? Japan has some of the most realistic fake foods for display that I've ever seen before. I just wanted to take some home with me!

It was a super hot day and I'm so grateful that everywhere indoors was airconditioned... 

But what better to do on a hot sunny day than to drink cold green tea and eat sweets? Seriously, it's such a good combination I totally intend to do it when it's summer time here~

At the base of a lot of malls, you can find the food level, where there are SO many different food stores which give out lovely, lovely samples for sweaty people. 

We met this really nice guy who gave us a ton of soy food samples to try, and chatted to us about where we were from and so on. (I guess it was pretty obvious we were tourists haha.)

We ended up eating yakitori (chicken skewers), a wakame salad (seaweed salad), and the tofu roll thingy from the guy. 

We couldn't find a place to sit so we went back outside and sat in the shade of a sculpture to eat, while watching a lot of little kids play in this water feature.

All in all, day 2 was a pretty relaxed day to recuperate from our flight. While we can't say much for Tokyo Skytree itself, I totally recommend taking a look at it and checking out the mall underneath it.

Part 3 coming soon I hope... sorry it's taking us forever to do any posts; we've just been so swamped with assignments and projects, and we've got the exams coming up. We'll probably have reviews and more posts after November~

[INNISFREE] Glossy Lip Lacquer

By J

If you've checked out our instagram, you'll have seen this picture before!

I posted this up before we went to Japan... and now I'm finally getting round to reviewing it.

I've been looking around for some darker lip colour to use, mainly because I always go for bright colours.
I bought this lip gloss/lacquer mainly as a splurge, and also to hit the $50 target in the last haul, so I could get the free tracking deal that comes with spending $50 in one go.


On the side note, jolse has done this huge overhaul of their site. They're having this 15% off sale on every item, which is pretty awesome. Except for the fact that using chrome as your browser means that you can't actually see any buttons that allow you to add things to cart, or even save the changes to your profile. Such as your password. :/

So back to the main thing in question. The glossy lip lacquer.

It looks really nice the packaging; nothing cheap. It's all sealed up when you get it.

I got mine in shade 5; they label it at the bottom of the tube.

You can see this glittery sort of sheen in the tube when you look at it in the light. This doesn't actually show up when you wear it so I wonder if it's actually just the tube.

Application wise, it's not hard. The wand is quite nice, and it's angled enough that you can manoeuvre it around on your lips.

Opacity-wise, this thing is pigmented. In fact, it looks quite daunting to slap this on your entire lip during the day time, so I've actually just been applying some, then dabbing it out to a slightly sheerer finish.

The bad thing is that it's really sticky. It's breezy in NZ in winter, and I like to keep my hair down as it actually keeps the heat to my neck and head (anyone else find that?). 

The result is something like, either I hold onto my hair to stop it attaching itself to my lips, or every so often I detach my hair from my lips. Not pretty, but for its price tag, I'm sure as heck gonna use this baby up.

___________________________________________________________________

Pros:

☺ Really glossy

☺ Really pigmented

Cons:

☹ It’s really sticky; it won’t stand a chance in the breeze

☹ You can noticeably feel a layer on your lips

☹ Not long lasting; if you eat, reapply

Overall: 2/5 
Verdict: I kinda regret getting this. ):
$9.88USD on ebay.

Look forward to the rest of the Japan blogs, makeup we got from there, and stuff we brought there to use!

Japan Trip 2014 Part 1

It's been over a month since we went to Japan, and nearly a month since we got back D:
So sorry it took so long to write up these blogs QQ

Date: July 1 2014
Destination: Tokyo, Japan, Narita Airport

A little back story to this trip: 
This was a relatively spontaneous trip decided in about a week or two, and planned very quickly (and roughly) during our summer break with two other friends. 
During our highschool years to now we'd all been fascinated and interested in Japanese culture (well, the three of us since one of us is Japanese and grew up in Japan).

So onto the story!

Udon on the plane c:

We arrived in the Narita Airport at around 4pm (jst) and got out at around 5pm. From the airport we took a bus near to our hotel. We were staying at the Tobu Levant Hotel since it offered a free bus to DisneyLand which was our third day's plan.

When we were done hauling our (at the moment, light) luggage down a stretch of the road and arrived at the front of the hotel, we realised how grungy we were LOL.

Tobu Levant Hotel has a pretty impressive entrance and an even more impressive lobby, so imagine 4 girls arriving in 11 hours worth or airplane smell and wrinkle clothing, hair starting to look a little gross, and everyone quite dishevelled from lack of sleep and makeup, into this grand entrance and into an airconditioned (hooray!!!!), marble tiled and marble columned lobby. :D"
It would have been a little embarassing if we weren't so excited to be there.

We sorted out all the admin stuff and were led to our rooms, which we then discovered weren't smokefree even though we'd asked for smokefree. 

Word of advice is, definitely ask for smokefree in Japan if you aren't a smoker/dislike the smell of smoke. Smoking seems to be a relatively common occurence in Japan.

Anyhow. We agreed that we'd wash our faces and then head out to look for some food.
We walked up and down the stretch of road outside our place and decided to have kaiten sushi, otherwise known as a sushi train.

The tap looking thing in the front gave out hot water for your tea.
Thankfully our friend taught us how to use it or else
 I would've gotten boiling water all over my hands ;A;

IT WAS SO GOOD.

K ate the other one before I managed to take a photo D;

Most memorable dishes were the unagi sushi and the scallop one.

For me (J), the scallop was like biting into the buttcheek of a baby cherub; it was so soft and pillowy and dreamy and @O@. It was ambrosia. It was beyond words and I'd give up my right eyebrow to eat another one. 
It was pretty cheap too since K and I shared the plates.

We didn't stay extremely long in there since the air con was so strong that when you scooped up green tea powder to make your tea, you could see bits of the powder blowing off o_o 

Afterwards, we bought some snacks from the convenience store and headed back up for the night.

Some sort of green tea frozen ice-cream/melty thing? It was good. 

Walking to find food

View from our room. We were right beside train tracks
but it really wasn't that noisy.

Day 1's post is pretty long but I promise the other ones won't be as word D:
Also, sorry about the lack of photos; we were just too dead to take any.

[Skinfood] Egg White Pore Foam Cleanser

After 23492308472389 years I have finally decided to write a review, after much whipping from J xD









---------------------------------------------------------------------

I couldn't find a good background so I went with black :c

Test with eyeliner (I actually had to draw the last line back on cause I accidentally washed it off)

Pros:
✓ Gentle
✓ Leaves skin feeling smooth, clean and not dehydrated (though not moisturised)
✓ Removes makeup well enough for people who don't wear thick layers of makeup
✓ Inexpensive
Cons:
✗  Won't remove thick makeup in one go (will need to double cleanse)

Overall: great cleanser for people who don't wear a tonne of makeup! :D
8/10

Follow us on instagram! @skineatery

http://instagram.com/skineatery
We went to Japan recently so there's not much makeup but lots of photos from Japan! :D

[ZA] Two-Way Foundation

It's J again :D

K and I went to a makeup sale recently/not so recently anymore. We didn't buy much; she bought two items shown at the bottom of her haul post here.

I wanted to buy a powder bb-cream/foundation 'cause a few of our friends and we are going to somewhere hotter and probably quite humid place in July, and I wanted a powder something.
And also, since it's Autumn going into Winter here, matte faces are more in trend than the dewy look of Spring and Summer xD"

[ZA] Two-Way foundation is a Japanese brand of makeup, and is pretty reputable.

 Yup yup. My shade is in 21 and K's is in 23. 

brightens

anti-shine

easy-touch up

has vitamin E for healthy and energized skin

won't clog pores

Pretty sure this is the old packaging? I've seen some reviews online with a pink shiny case.

Ughhh sorry about the lighting ): I really couldn't figure out how to fix it up anymore. 
The second image is more accurate in terms of colour.

Comes with an 'anti-bacterial' sponge (not sure how true that claim is lol)

The powder is quite fine and offers decent coverage

So in the before, I've just put on moisturiser hence the shininess of my face, and on the right I've put on one layer of the foundation, applied with the sponge wet.

Oh yeah. The blur in the background is because I'm wearing pjs and am in the bathroom lol. Sorry ^ ^;

In the picture I've used the foundation without concealer under my eyes. Look at that coverage!

On a day to day basis I've been using this alone (although it says you can apply it over tinted moisturiser/bb-cream or whatever for more coverage), and over concealer under my eyes, to set it.

Can I just say I'm loving this foundation? It doesn't feel too drying (but I do recommend those with drier skin like me to wear a good moisturiser under this first) and I think this would work well for those with normal to slightly oily skin. If you have rather oily skin I'd suggest using an oil-controlling something underneath first.

Its coverage is pretty amazing; it's good enough that I don't feel self-conscious going without concealer under my eyes. Pretty impressive o;

__________________________________________________________________

Pros:

☺ Good coverage. Medium to full I reckon?

☺ Decent oil control; lasts pretty well even when it was sweltering in Japan, although I did use a mattifying lotion underneath.

☺ Two methods of application; wet for dry skin and dry for oil skin

☺ Doesn’t feel heavy on skin

Cons:

☹ Not sure where to buy a refill

☹ Clings a little so if you have flaking skin, exfoliate

Overall: 4.75/5  I like this a lot! If only I could find out where to buy the refill ><
I bought this for $12NZD at a sale. Can't direct you where to buy this sorry!

[TONY MOLY] I'm Real Seaweed Aqua Moisture Lotion (Part 2)

 It's me again <3 cc:
And no it's not because I'm very free in terms of time but I'm being a very bad girl and just fudgeling. I'll be regretting this in a week. :D

This is a review of the TonyMoly I'm Real Seaweed Aqua Moisture Lotion, but just the packaging. I've done a review of this product here. Originally I was going to add this to the end but I realised this was going to get way too long so. Here's part 2?

The packaging design is pretty similar to the sample package, clean and simple.

It tells you what stuff it does/doesn't contain. 

Check out my product review page to see what it is.

It comes sealed if you can see in the left picture. A quick pull and it'll open up. Word of warning, lotion might come flying out and splatter around, as you can see from the lotion on my hand.
___________________________________________________________________

Pros:

☺ Sturdy plastic bottle; don’t worry about dropping it!

☺ Cap isn’t metal. Since I keep it in the bathroom, the last thing I want is rusting metal near my skincare stuff, thanks.

☺ The opening isn’t as big as I feared in my previous review. It’s actually pretty decent at controlling the amount that comes out

Cons:

☹ Kind of big and heavy/bulky for travel (but it’s 200ml so what do you really expect? xD”) 

Overall: 4.95/5 
Lovin' it :D

Review of the actual lotion here.
Finally bought it in my recent haul here.