Lioness in Japan

I know this picture has beauty goodies so shouldn’t this be on my beauty blog instead? Well this post is not really about what’s in the picture but who gave them to me.

Xuan, a fellow blogger from Singapore, helped me get Clarisonic brush heads from the US (waaay cheaper than in Japan — half the price!) and kindly threw in some goodies as well.

I finally met up with her in Singapore and we had lots to talk about. We had known each other online for a couple of years now over various social media platforms so perhaps that’s not so surprising. We actually wanted to meet up in Tokyo last year when she visited but couldn’t for various reasons, especially after the March 11 earthquake. She had been thinking of moving to Tokyo since she has a Japanese fiance and so thought it would be wise to read up on how Singaporean expats lived here.

It feels really nice to get to know people through this humble blog of mine.

Well, the kangaroo is anyway. In a dusty Vietnamese bookshop in Nha Trang, he picked up this book by Moe Oshikiri, an ex-model, who wrote a book that is part memoir and part “how to be happy” manual. He thought it was just a self-help book on how to improve your attitude in life and little did he know it was written by a fashion model.

But it’s still highly commendable that he has been ploughing away at this book. He says the vocab is fairly simple since the target audience must be teenage girls. Perhaps the kangaroo will learn a thing or two about women from this book. I have high hopes.

Our new pug, Cookie, in Singapore is a ball of energy and just what the family needed after our two beloved dogs, Coffee and Taffy, passed away within three months of each other.

Yes, our family has a thing for food names and pets.

Cookie looks a little guilty here because she had been scolded by us for rummaging through our stinky Vietnam clothes.

At last, my very own office. My personal cave…except the kangaroo put his weights here as well but he doesn’t use them very often, so I pretend the whole room is mine. I could even start using the weights so it’s really all mine in this room.

The flowers are actually real, believe it or not. They were given to me last August for my birthday and they are still looking quite alive and fresh. It’s got something to do with it being soaked in a special chemical substance that keeps this small bouquet going for up to nine months apparently — amazing!

I’m still always filled with disbelief when I see snow like this in Tokyo. That’s the view from my living room the morning after it bucketed down tonnes of snow through the night. It may be cold but there are blue skies almost everyday.

Since our new house is bigger, it’s also colder. I’ve bought new blankets, Uniqlo heat tech long johns, socks, sweaters, hoodies to keep warm while I work at home. It’s been really hard on my Singaporean tropical self — it just ain’t natural to be this cold all the time.

That’s me with a hot water bottle, a fleece blanket, and Ugg boots.

Hot water bottles (or ゆたんぽ）in Japan are hard plastic bottles that can take hot boiling water without crumpling. Mine comes with a cute green and white polka dotted flannel sleeve as it can feel quite hot without one.

How are you keeping warm this winter?

Happy Chinese New Year!! May the year of the Water Dragon be prosperous and full of happiness for you!

The one thing that sucks about living abroad is not being able to celebrate Chinese New Year with my family. Despite the idiosyncrasies faced in any family gathering, I still really enjoy getting together, eating, catching up, and just hanging out doing nothing much. It didn’t feel like a big deal when I could celebrate every year without fail, but when I couldn’t, it became a huge deal.

I went through a phase where I just shrugged it off, but I honestly felt twinges of sadness inwardly, and that’s probably why the kangaroo had no idea it was such a big deal to me for years. I would go out for a CNY eve dinner with various friends, but in recent years, I started throwing CNY dinner parties at our place because the kangaroo would invariably be travelling for business during that time (post Dec/Jan travel is a must for his work).

So this year, I will be holding a joint party with another Chinese Singaporean friend but that’s next Saturday and I still wanted to do something special somehow on the eve and the universe answered.

I had a dim sum lunch with my Japanese gal pals at Tsim Sha Tsui. I would highly recommend this place — it’s authentic and cheap, complete with a Cantonese-speaking waitress.

By the way, I ate most of this plate of pei dan or century egg because it really freaked out my Japanese friends. I wonder if they think I’m gross? LOL!

Then miraculously, I was asked to play tennis and then go for Chinese hot pot after. Spicy hotpot in Japan called hinabe and my Japanese friends loved it although they sweated and teared and drank a lot of beer in the whole process.

Our Chinese hot pot dinner was at Xiao Fei Yang in Shibuya. There’s quite a bit of MSG in the soup but it was still freaking amaze-balls.

So….I was a happy Chinese girl yesterday…and today…

The kangaroo and I share an interest in historical stuff so we had to check out the My Son ruins (often likened to Cambodia’s Ang Kor Wat, but it’s much smaller in scale) that were bombed during the Vietnam War but had been slowly reconstructed through the years.

Here’s a ridiculously happy shot of us but we cheesed out for the camera because it was actually a shockingly grey day at the Imperial Palace in Hue. It was a really good walk, and again, if you are a history buff, you will love this place.

The kangaroo really wanted to stop and rest for five to six days — just eating, reading, sleeping, swimming, beaching. Google led him to Jungle Beach where there was nothing much but some huts, a quiet beach, homey Vietnamese food, and hammocks.

This was our hut and we had such a glorious time just being. I would slather on some mosquito repellant and sun block and curl up with a book. Bliss.

We also slept on Hello Kitty bedsheets. Japan always finds us somehow, no matter where we are in the world…

In continuation of my honeymoon series…

It was pretty cold in Vietnam’s northern capital city, Hanoi, so it was no surprise that Halong Bay was chilly too but it was worth going there because it really was beautiful even though a bit touristy. It felt quaint sleeping in a cozy cabin on an old-fashioned “junk boat” (with a motor, running water, electricity, etc. of course).

We took a cruise in one of those boats above. We kayaked, hiked, cycled, ate, and just had a rad time with an Aussie couple from Perth and a Kiwi couple from Wellington.

We climbed quite a few stairs to reach up the top of a hill to get this view. It was really lovely.