One of the things I love about travelling to Japan is shopping for beauty products. Actually, make that shopping in general. Asian cosmetics are ridiculously overpriced in Australia and when you finally see your favourite Japanese brands selling fabulous makeup for less than AU$20 (a lot even less than AU$10) each, it’s no wonder why it becomes some sort of supermarket sweep.

I find it incredibly hard to resist shops like Matsumoto Kiyoshi and Segami. These are drugstores that sell the major beauty brands Shiseido, Kanebo, Kose and so on (with plenty of smaller brands under those umbrella ones). I highly prefer them to Sephora (cue gasps!) because the choices are endless. You’d want to put everything you see into your shopping cart, I can guarantee you that.

As usual, my disclaimer is that this haul is not meant to brag, show off … all that jazz. You know what I mean. 🙂

I resisted from buying too much makeup this time. I bought a lot during my last trip to Japan and I hardly used any of them. This time, I concentrated on sunscreens and boy oh boy, do they have a lot of sunscreens. I like how most if not all of Japanese sunscreens are very lightweight and non-greasy which makes them great bases for makeup. Some even sell refills which are slightly cheaper than the bottled ones. Travel tip: if you have opaque bottles at home, opt for refills instead as they take up less space and weight.

I didn’t go crazy on the BB and CC creams this time and only stuck to one each. I also picked up a couple of refills of cleansing oils (again, great for travellers as they’re much lighter than the actual bottles and can be decanted to clear bottles). As it’s now summer in Japan, they’re not only selling a lot of sunscreens but also facial blotting papers. I love the mino-washi ones as they work better for oily T-zones.

A trip to the departmental stores like Takashimaya, Daimaru or Isetan will not be complete without stopping over at the SUQQU counter. This time, I zeroed in on just two items I really wanted to try, which were the Cheek Brush and the eyebrow pen as they came highly recommended by Lisa Eldridge. That brush, to date, is now the most expensive makeup brush I own. I wanted to get it 2 years ago but couldn’t bring myself to spend over $150 on it. This time, I caved. Sigh, the flesh is weak, people. It’s weak.

SUQQU’s customer service, as with everywhere else in Japan, was impeccable. The sales assistant offered to give me a makeover and showed me some of their “summer foundations” (e.g. lightweight and/or waterproof foundations). I enjoyed her service so much that I ended up picking up the blush she used on me too. 😛

Other than my beauty haul, I also went a little crazy at Uniqlo. I don’t have any pictures of the clothes I picked up from Uniqlo to show you as they’re all wrinkled from being squashed in the luggage and are also in the laundry basket now. They had great sales going on when we were there so Tim and I just went nuts buying tops, bottoms, undies, socks and so on back. In fact, we bought so much clothes that we needed to buy compression packing bags from Daiso, borrow a vacuum cleaner from the hotel (ah, such an interesting conversation it sparked with the hotel front desk on why we needed to borrow their industrial-strength vacuum cleaner) and compress the clothes just so we could pack them into our luggage!

I thought I’d also show you a few items that are non-beauty related that I just had to get when I was in Japan. In fact, the first things on my shopping list were Pilot Frixion pen refills. I absolutely adore these pens (they’re erasable!) and literally bought out all the stock Takashimaya, Daimaru and Tokyu Hands had. No kidding; I literally cleared all their shelves of the black and blue refills. Oh yeah, I was a girl on a pen mission!

The last item in the haul you’ll see here is the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8. Granted, it’s not the newest model but it was pretty cheap so I decided to get it. The thing about these instant cameras is that while the camera is relatively cheap, the film isn’t. I bought the plain white film in bulk just so each piece is cheaper. Of course, the white ones are quite boring so I also added some from Little Twin Stars, Winnie the Pooh and pink polka-dotted ones. 😛

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my Japanese beauty haul. I bought a lot more beauty and non-beauty products than you see here but I’ve decided not to show you what they are as some of them are gifts and some of them will be in a, oh I don’t know, a giveaway perhaps? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out! *hint hint wink wink*

Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to review and I’ll get on it. If you’ve tried out anything here that I’ve purchased, let me know what you think of them!