Kawaiikkuma Buying Service Review

HELLO GUYS, MERRY CHRISTMAS! Okay, this is late. Did you guys have a merry Christmas? I hope you all did! I only went to the church on Christmas Eve and spent the Christmas lazing around at home but I was truly happy! This year all my best friends are in the town (they all go to different uni) hehehe.

Three or four days ago, I wrote an entry but I was not able to finish it. It's about an event called Comic Frontier that I participated in. I promise I will post it as quickest as possible! (Edit : Posted here.)

Speaking of Christmas, I usually do Christmas shopping with my mom and my brothers, but apparently it was not possible to do it this year. Still, I wanted to get one, so I decided to look for this LIZ LISA dress I fell in love with online and I found it on Yahoo Japan Auctions.

Link here.

Questions popped up. 'How do I do things on this site? Can the seller send it to my country? Should I use Tenso? But to use Tenso's forwarding service, you have to buy the items you want on your own with credit card---right? Oh, this is starting to be confusing. Okay, buying service that is!'

I stumbled upon Kawaiikkuma!

(site link here, or for fellow Indonesians, Kaskus thread here.)

An online store who has been selling Rilakkuma merch from Japan in Indonesia and overseas for years. They undoubtedly can handle this stuff perfectly fine! And oh hello you got kuma on your name too.

They charge 1000 JPY per item and 5% payment fee for their partner in Japan from overall transaction for every transaction. For example, since my item is an auctioned item, I will have to pay for the deposit first and pay the rest later, so I got charged 5% twice.

Kawaiikkuma offers two types of buying service; All-In-One Service and Direct Service. For the first option, your item will be sent to their partner's address in Japan, then to Indonesia, and finally to your place. They will take care of the things with customs and everything. Direct Service is--basically just like its name, from their partner in Japan then to your place. If you are not residing in Indonesia, I guess this will be your only choice. Worry not, I chose the second service too! Since I want my pretty dress to arrive as soon as possible lol.

Here goes the journey!

17/12/13 : Placement of order. I emailed them at 1 PM and they replied me at 7 PM. Not very fast but they still reply on the same day!
18/12/13 : I made the payment and they put bid on the item.
19/12/13 : They congratulated me for winning the auction!
24/12/13 : My item arrived on their place in Japan. Photo of the dress in package attached on the email. And here comes the pain, settlement invoice!
25/12/13 : I completed the payment at 1.34 PM but--
26/12/13 : Item sent to Indonesia. I was disappointed that they did not send my item on the day I paid. I made the payment as fastest as I could so they could send my item on the same day, but I guess I still could not make it?
30/12/13 : PACKAGE ARRIVED PARTY TIME. Wait, Christmas has passed! It's actually for Christmas!! Whatever, PARTAAAAYY.


Charge details :

First payment
1,900 JPY (max. bid, amount deposited for the auction) + 1,000 JPY (service fee) = 2,900 JPY
2,900 JPY × 130 IDR = 377,000 IDR

300 JPY left from the auction, used for shipping fee.

Second payment
90  JPY (domestic shipping fee, it was 350 JPY at first but turned out to be 390 JPY on the invoice) + 110 JPY (bank fee, charged because the seller used different bank account) + 155 JPY (5% payment fee from the first payment) + 1,240 JPY (EMS shipping fee for a 600g item) + 62 JPY (5% payment fee from the second payment) = 1,657 JPY
1,657 JPY × 130 IDR = 215,410 IDR

Total amount paid : 592,410 IDR (What.)

I took the image above from their Kaskus thread. I can tell that they are very organized, they have this posted on their thread for every order made. This might be unnecessary but they used various fonts and colors on their thread, making their writing looks cute, neat, and easy to read. I was surprised, people on Kaskus don't usually pay attention to this kind of thing, really.

Anyway, photos!!

WOOOHOOOOBUHOOO

Open it like a Pocky box!

 

'What? Did they put in a Pokémon pillow by mistake?' I thought. By the way, I like the old version of Pikachu better. The new one looks like it's been told to work out, it's doesn't look so fluffy and puffy anymore.

It's only a plastic bag from Pokémon Center! It has XY's legendary Pokémon on it, makes me want to buy Y because I like the deer (I'm certainly keeping this uber cute plastic bag). Inside the bag is my beautiful Liz Lisa dress!!

*goes crazy over the dress*

No photo of me wearing the dress because I suck at OOTDish photos. I tried though.

The quality of the dress is not questionable. At first, the skirt part is not as fluffy and as soft as I thought it would be, the white color also turns out to be more beige, but it's still soooo nice I was overwhelmed when trying out the dress. The top part's material feels super nice. I have been wanting for a Liz Lisa dress terribly bad and I finally have one.

Back to the review!

The person replying my emails was very nice and actually reply me real fast too (except for the first day). I'm satisfied with their service and I have no complaint! (Edit : Ok I probably have a complaint. That is the service fee. At first, I assumed that all Japan shopping services are expensive as heck, but I found this. 1000 JPY for every item is just--ugh, it pains when the service fee costs more than the item itself, but it's my poor wallet's problem ok.)

I definitely would recommend their service to you whenever you want to buy something from Japanese online stores. The person in charge of replying my email was very nice, they reply fast and they always give me updates of the order--which feels reassuring. They always mark your package as a gift too, so no need to pay more tax when you receive your package.

Now it's almost the end of the year, I would like to thank you for reading my blog! Happy new year to you guys! Excuse me, my head is fuzzy, I write this blog entry as I drink wine I want to throw myself to bed now.

First Excursion

Post that is supposed to be up since August-September. Never mind, it's here!

The excursion is a part of our school, held for us students so we can go on a tour around the cities in France. Everyday they have different program of tour and they are all interesting! After class you can go to the administration building to sign up and pay, but you to be quick because they have limited places!

For the first excursion I attended, we went to Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert. It's a small village near Pont du Diable, a river where we would do canoë-kayak later.

Photo taken from bus window---so, yeah. Can you see the river with greenish water there?

See the river?! Ugh, I swear it was hard taking good photos of the river there. Really, I want to show you how cool the river is!!

After our bus stopped. Street view. Whatever, I like it.

TA-DAH! Eighteen posts and finally a photo of me (I'm just not a fan of selfies). When I had this as my profile picture on WhatsApp, some people were surprised because they know how I never go out with shorts (and that's the only shorts I have before I decided to buy another during summer sale). But I figured I had to wear shorts there. It's more practical and for my first two weeks there I always got people looking at me weirdly because I wear t-shirt, jeans, socks and shoes to class. 'It gets hot just by looking at you,' my housemate said to me. Well, in my country you can't go to class wearing tank top, shorts and sandals, unless you want your teacher to be glaring at you!

*dramatic BGM plays* It's here. The village! I'm coming for yaaaa!

WAAAOOOOWAAAWWOOOO the old village is so pretty, I can't even describe, I will let the photos explain for you!

*drools*

Inside l'abbaye de Gellone. An old church. I didn't listen to the tour guide very well, I can't tell you the history behind the church lol. But don't be mistaken, I like seeing old churches!

Would you like to try pronouncing these names?

You can buy some candles for you to pray.

The altar.

Et le verre s'est fait chair. 'And the glass is made from flesh'? I like the typography!

The church's fish pond. The church itself is actually pretty huge.

And finallyyyy

Main activity of the excursion I was looking forward to! Canoeing! I didn't take any photo after this one. We changed into our swimsuit and got into a small boat in a group of two person. I went with my housemate, I took the front side and we struggled to get the boat to move properly. We weren't doing it right, IT WAS SUPER TIRING. The tour guide had to come to help us, he brought our boat to where everyone was gathering. Then everyone swam happily--except me, because I CAN'T SWIM. I was only--floating, relying on my life jacket. PUTTING MY LIFE ON IT.

It would be really fun if I could swim *cries* I cringed whenever I see someone climbing the cliff and jump off into the water.

I still have more photos from other excursion, I will post them later! Thanks for reading, guys!

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami Book Review

A wild book review appears.

I have been wanting to write a book review for a while, now I finally got to do it. It's going to be short. Not spoiler-free. If you plan to read this and you don't want to read any spoiler, I don't suggest you to continue reading this review.

296 pages, bought for Rp 96.000,- (around $8) at Periplus (can be bought online here).

Haruki Murakami is a popular author, known worldwide, not only in Japan. He is popular for one of his best-selling books, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (which I have not read). Many said that his writings are poetic. I picked this book because I simply craved for books that are poetic and not straight-forward. Rather than the actions of the characters, I could be more captivated by the feelings and situations described carefully by the author--which I failed to find in this book.

The melancholic story revolves around deaths, suicides, and mental illnesses. With lots of sex. In the story, Toru reminisced his memories of his teenage years.

Toru Watanabe, Kizuki, and Naoko were childhood friends. Kizuki and Naoko were also a couple. At age seventeen, Kizuki took his own life, leaving his girlfriend and best friend with deep, incurable wound. They had to keep on living, getting older, while their Kizuki would stay seventeen forever.

Toru and Naoko later developed romantic relationship. However, their relationship did not go like how other couples could be. Naoko moved to a sanatorium where she could recover from her illness, communicating with Toru only through letters. Toru filled his loneliness by hanging out with his so-called super charming womanizer buddy, Nagasawa, who helped Toru to hit on girls and get them onto bed.

(Wow my level of seriousness in writing the review is dropping here. But I'm still going to finish!)

Nagasawa also had a girlfriend who was truly kind and faithful to him. But through news Toru got few years later, after Nagasawa moved abroad, the girl, Hatsumi, could not hope for her love to be returned any longer and got married to someone else, then committed suicide.

Sometimes Toru visited Naoko, they spent time together in the sanatorium with Naoko's guardian, Reiko.

To me, Reiko is the character who stands out the most in the story and has important role in it. There is one thing in her background story that does not make sense though, the part where she got seduced by a thirteen-year-old girl, did sexy dirty things with the girl and later regretted it, because apparently the girl had a twisted evil mind who could victimize herself and turn people to make Reiko feel terrible with her life. Feeling like a burden, Reiko divorced her husband. Thus she came to the sanatorium and met Naoko.

As time passed, Toru fell in love with his colleague, Midori. Although he was not sure with his own feelings, he wanted to end everything with Naoko first (even when he already had promised to wait for Naoko to come back) before he could start another new relationship with Midori properly.

Naoko hanged herself.

Devastated Toru appeared.

Reiko visited Toru and slept with him.

(You probably have realized by now how I don't enjoy writing a review for this book.)

Story finished with Toru speaking with Midori on phone and questioning himself where he was after wandering to only-God-knows where, suffering from Naoko's death.

I wanted to like this book. I really wanted to. But I hardly could find any essential meaning that the book is trying to tell us. The protagonist's personality itself is hard to grasp. All characters failed to leave me with a deep impression. The writing style is way too straight-forward.

I thought that maybe it's because I read the English translation version. It's always better to read a book in its original language. But in the end, I concluded that Murakami's writing is just not my cup of tea.

The novel has been adapted to a movie too and it did not change my opinion towards the story.

If not for Kenichi Matsuyama (Toru Watanabe) and Kiko Mizuhara (Midori), I would not watch the movie until the very end.

Anyway, those who like 'erotic, twisted love story' might like this (I still don't think it's going to worth your time though).

Off continuing Artemis Fowl: Le Paradoxe du Temps now!

Yves Rocher Stop Correcteur Malin Review

My first post in December! I'm sorry I have not been able to write much. Do you guys have certain plan for Christmas? I wish that this month will be another great month for you guys!

I will now review another product from Yves Rocher I randomly grabbed when I was in France! Which I use very often. To my surprise, all of their products I bought didn't go to waste. My friend loves the brown mascara I gave her, my mom uses the lipstick (I didn't get the chance to ask her whether she likes it or not), I use the concealer and the lip gloss.

I did a brief introduction of the brand Yves Rocher and a review of the lip gloss before, if you have not read it, do check it here yay!

So what does the product do?

Yep, you read it yourself. It is a concealer that Yves Rocher claims to be capable of concealing your acne, pimples, or any 'imperfection' and making them dry faster. Sounds amazing, no?

I assume this product is only available in France, because I could not find it in the US and Canada ones, so--here you go, in French, from their site :

Camoufle les imperfections et accélère leur disparition
Un correcteur indispensable à garder au fond du sac pour camoufler les imperfections et accélérer leur disparition.

Testé sous contrôle dermatologique
Composants d'origine végétale : Extrait de scutellaire

Son + : hyper pratique, c'est le produit complice par excellence, à emporter dans son sac à main partout avec soi.

What kind of writing is that, Yves Rocher?! 'Son +' (its +), really? Please try to write the description for your own product properly.

Aaaanyway. Google Translate in action.

Camouflages imperfections and accelerates their demise
Indispensable to keep in your bag to conceal imperfections and accelerate their demise checker.

Tested under dermatological control
Components of plant origin: Extract from Scutellaria

The Plus: very practical, the accomplice product par excellence, to be carried in her purse anywhere.

Ingredients (written on its plastic sealer) :

Ethylhexyl Cocoate, Paraffin, Ozokerite, Cera Microcristallina, Phenyl Trimethicone, Salicylic Acid, Copaifera Officinalis, Resin, Tocopheryl Acetate, Scutellaria Baicalensis Extract, CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499, CI 77891

It contains 1,4 g of the product.

Expiration date and color of the shade. Unfortunately, they apparently only have one single shade for this product, I asked the shop clerk there for other shade option and a tester, but they did not have any. I read on their site that a lot of people complained for not having more shades available.

Stick type, you can use up all of it, the advantage of a stick-type concealer.

As you can see, the shade is actually very deep.

Without and with flash. Deep shade with orange undertone.

A little bit of rant from me :

This shade actually suits my skin tone really well. Before I went to France, I ordered a concealer from CANMAKE. It arrived when I was in France. After going back, I was surprised that this was the only concealer that worked on my tanned skin (I thanked my randomness for grabbing this thing!). My Etude House Surprise Essence Concealer and CANMAKE Cover & Stretch Concealer UV (both in Natural Beige) turned out to be too light for my tanned skin *sobs*

I did not even intend to tan my skin (when my friends back there tried really hard to get tanned). I was looking forward to try my CANMAKE concealer, forgetting the fact that the sun in France was harsh. My friend would not stop staring at me, wanting to have 'sun-tanned golden skin' I had. Well, it comforted me. Thank goodness my BB cream has this color-matching system, so I did not have to buy another in deeper shade.

End of rant!

So, does it really work?

It works on my dark circles well, better than my other concealers. Peach and orange tones are the best for your dark circles. The coverage is also great for other areas. But the texture is not creamy enough, it feels dry and it's hard to blend it out, especially on your dark circles. Yes, it works well there but the texture is the problem. While patting motion is the best way to blend out concealer under your eyes, it doesn't work with this concealer. I usually blend it out by rubbing and--reminding myself not to be harsh on my under eyes.

As for its lasting power, there is nothing outstanding. I'm sorry, I always failed to check how many hours it could last on my face, I can't tell you how long exactly it could last, but what I know is it's definitely better than Etude House Surprise Essence Concealer's lasting power.

It smells like---your foundation powder. Faint, does not bother me.

How about the 'drying imperfections' claim? Nah, I used it quiet diligently on a few pimples, it didn't medicate any of them.

Price :
4,10€ (around $5.6 or Rp 67.000,-)

Where to buy :
Yves Rocher stores. Use the store locator here. Yves Rocher's products are mostly available in America and Europe, the only Asian country who has them is China.

What I dislike :

• The dry texture, making it hard to blend out around under eyes.
• Does not last for long time.
• Does not actually make acne dry faster.

What I like :

• Works great on dark circles.
• Cheap (yes, this has to be added!).
• Matches my tanned skin well.

Repurchase? No.