Lioness in Japan

I know my recent posts haven’t been the happiest but I think those of you who are interested in Japan would like to know that things are back to normal and the stress of the triple disasters (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear leaks) have melted away…at least where I am concerned.

Today I uploaded a video for my Beauty Box TV channel because I have been bombarded with many questions about Tokyo after the Mar 11 so I thought a video would be a much better way to address these concerns.

Here, I answer FAQs about radiation (or lack thereof) in Tokyo, whether it is appropriate to travel here, and if life is back to normal. Tokyo is back to her gorgeous, amazing self and you should come visit. Help Japan by coming here and spending your money so our economy can flourish again.

Yes, we all know that being your own boss is great. I’ve read so many blog posts and articles about working for yourself and all the perks: flexi-time, you answer to no one, and you make all the decisions. Cool, your self-esteem is rockin’ and you’ll never go back to slaving for someone else.

But how about the process of switching your mindset from being a life-long employee to boss lady? What’s that like? Is it easy?

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The kangaroo was very excited when he saw this a couple of days ago.

He was like, “Babe, you gotta take a photo of your first big delivery from Tokyo!”

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Just a small announcement to get some support for the Tokyo edition of Metblogs. I just started as a blogger for them because I saw there was a call for writers back in August — I stumbled upon it through another blog in late October, so I sent my application in to try my luck. They liked what they saw in Lioness in Japan, so here I am blogging about Tokyo at Metblogs.

If you are interested in following my posts, you can look at my sidebar under “Find Me” and you will see the links to the posts I’ve written there.

For those of you unfamiliar with Metblogs, it’s a blog network for cities all over the world, from London to Melbourne. You could kind of see these blogs as a way to get to know a city better but not treading the way of sanitized stuff from travel guides.

You’re probably wondering how similar or different it would be from LIJ. Well, this is my personal blog so it would still be about my life in Japan from my perspective as a Singaporean/trailing partner/business owner expat, and I would veer off on topics close to my heart. But my articles on Tokyo Metblogs will be a little bit more newsy — Japanese culture, trends, social issues, fun things to do in the city, cool bars and restaurants to check out, and anything endearingly “Tokyo”.

As readers of this blog know, I was a magazine journalist back home. With recent events in my life, I’ve been doing a lot of reflection on the past and what I want out of the future in my career.

While I was leafing through my memories, I stumbled upon my my two-year stint at a certain women’s magazine. Besides travel and technology, I wrote articles about sex and relationships fairly regularly.

At the time, another colleague took the column on products and trends, while I did the special sex supplements and at least one or two articles about relationships per month.

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It’s almost midnight in Tokyo and the apartment is super silent — I had a very full and noisy pad for a week and I kind of miss that. But back to the grind and a thousand apologies for not publishing interesting posts. I will soon though!

I’ve just stocked up on some products for the month of November. Check out BB’s new Kose, DHC, and Fancl products here. Happy shopping!

I need to give a special mention to Dr Hagiwara’s Premium Barley Green Powder and Unicity’s Super Chlorophyll Powder which are on sale at Beauty Box: I’ve been taking a tsp of both in a glass of cool water daily since I was 20 (it’s been 10 friggin’ years!) and I must say I can’t do without this green blend.

Admittedly, this “sludge” (as the kangaroo calls it) doesn’t taste that great and is probably similar to wheatgrass in flavour, but this potent mix has helped me stave off terrible skin disorders (acne and eczema) and various allergies. Why not share the goodness?

Beauty is not skin-deep and it starts from within. You can’t put junk in your body and expect your skin to look great. It’s the blueprint of what’s going on internally so treat yourself right.

It’s really too early to tell what effect another blog would have on my ever-growing stable of blogs, but I decided to take the plunge and launch a blog on Livejournal as a way to talk about beauty tips, tricks, and raves from an ordinary girl’s perspective.

Well, it’s also another avenue to promote and create awareness for my blog shop, Beauty Box, by tapping into the LJ community which is seriously a whole other blog universe on its own.

I’m no make up expert but I do love my products so I feel enthused about having a girly blog to indulge my vanity. When I was writing lifestyle and features columns for magazines back in Singapore, I always secretly wished I was in the beauty department but felt I didn’t meet the style quota. Anyway, here’s my own corner to fulfill that desire and chat about what I love in my powder room right here in Japan.

Beauty Box is having a pre-order spree for Fancl products — prices are 15% off retail prices. The deadline for submitting orders is November 15, Friday.

For more details, click here.

Please help spread the word to your friends who are Fancl fanatics. Thanks!

Join Beauty Box’s Facebook group here

My heart feels heavy right now — I just returned from my meeting with the social insurance people who explained the process of collecting unemployment pay.

I know this is a good thing because it’s some financial support in lieu of being retrenched and you can’t say no to such help. But it felt like a very sad day although I was more than prepared for it. I just wanted to get over with it and take the cash. Honestly, I had no emotions whatsoever and practical issues were only on my mind.

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After dealing with a sleepless night, I staggered out of my futon like a bear with a sore head. I think it was the umeshu (plum liquor) I had last night at dinner and I was maybe feeling a little stressed about getting things done, so I watched several episodes of Brothers & Sisters till 4am.

But at midday, as I went through my RSS reader, I clicked on ProBlogger.net, blogging evangelist Darren Rowse’s blog about blogging tips, and saw that Lioness in Japan was featured on his post today, Reflections on 48 Hours of Inviting Readers to Comment ‘Spam’ My Blog.

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