after four separate stays in Japan, I've managed to settle into the idea that the way most Japanese women look is just a different category to me. I can more or less not be anything like them, they more or less cant be anything like me. It helps when I come across clothes with waist lines the size of one of my thighs.
I used this last year. I absolutely adore it - I guess I must have skin that's on the resilient side! IIRC, it's super duper on its own but doesn't play too well with makeup? No matter, it will be my boon companion this summer as well
Also Biore Skin Milk is amazing if you can get it, very high spf and fairly low super sticky feelings.
Korean skin care seems inteeeeense. I don't really know it but it has similarities to Japanese routines. I am a very poor skin caretaker, but the lighter weights of Japanese skin stuff has been pretty good to me! My move is to ignore more stuff, use a "lotion"/toner (water with stuff in it, pretty much) and then a "milk" (super light weight moisturizer) on top of that, plus sheet masks when I feel like lazing yet pretending I'm doing something.
Take with a grain of salt, we've only had one day of 30C temperatures, in three weeks these tips will be reduced to "everything is futile, just find a fan and hug it"
My job is kind of strange and incredibly vaguely defined. I work for a small family company (shacho is friend of a friend of a friend) who hired me without a super defined role because they liked me and because they're in the Scandinavian stuff business and I'm Scandinavian. After I arrived it turned out that I brought a lot of competence in techy stuff, so I built us a webshop and better website, and maintaining them make up the bulk of my job. However, as the company is truly minuscule I help out where I can, e.g. working events at department stores, some design work, occasional answering of phones etc. It's a pretty casual job, so I don't have the dress codes most people have(luckily!)
I had serendipity on my side, but the number one thing that helped me find work here was going back on a tourist visa and actively looking for work. Pretty much no one hires from abroad. (Apparently Rakuten does but I hear they are a terrible work place unless you're tech/engineering staff)
I remember craftgrrl! It turned me on to decoupage and collage and other such things. I did a few projects very poorly, and doubt I ever shared anything, but just knowing that making stuff according to my own tastes was an option really brightened growing up goth in the countryside.
When I had just started dating my boyfriend, he remembered zoombinis from when he was a kid, and I managed to track down a terrible version. We spent way too much time hanging out and going on that logical journey. Holds up
I haven't done it in a while, but stovetop popcorn was a revelation to me. It's really fun! It's pretty easy! (Especially with a glass lid for your pan) You can put all the things on it! (Za'atar is good, also Parmesan)
My brothers all pretty much learned English from Sierra games. Stuff like King's Quest and Hero's Quest - my parents were forever chill wrt computer games after they witnessed my brothers struggle through typing in "take knife" with the correct spelling (although they pronounced kuh-nee-feh for quite a while)
My jam (I think at age four) was Mixed Up Morher Goose. I downloaded it again recently and was completely shocked by how slow your little pixel character moves
We're on the brink of my fourth summer in Japan, my second as a working person. Every year my resolve to get through looking reasonably human evaporates after the third day of 80% humidity and perfectly still air. With baby fine hair and oily skin this seems an impossible battle. This year, I want to conquer my reverse SAD* and get through two months of unbearable heat and humidity while looking neat and slightly professional. Is this possible?? Has any human ever achieved this? Especially if born within spitting** distance of the Arctic circle.
*I guess it's still seasons affecting, just not with darkness
** 7 hours drive but within the scheme of things ie the planet
I don't know if it will stand in the face of the true HellSummer we get here, but I went to the forever21 sales and got lots of lace tights and boat neck/off the shoulder tops to hopefully combine with fluffy skirts in lieu of last year's summer uniform of "the only way I could feel less happy is getting up early enough to shave my tender overworked skin once a-friggin'-gain, jeans and t-shirt it is"
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Opus