First-off, I hate using hotel shampoo or any shampoo I’m unfamiliar with so I always bring my own haircare when I travel. I took a gamble once when I only had cabin luggage on a budget flight and put something like 12 of these haircare packs into my side pocket and it went through the baggage scanner fine. I didn’t have to put them in a clear plastic ziplock! I think it just shows up as flat rectangular objects under the scanner. Since then, I have always toted along these non-silicone haircare packs with me on trips and my luggage also gets lighter because they’re toss-and-use.

Of course I got one of my faves, Reveur, which is an excellent brand where non-silicone haircare is concerned and their duo packs are always sold in stores here. I would highly recommend the green one over the purple one, simply because it smells so goooood. It’s got kiwi and what not in the formula.

Not pictured here (unfortunately, I forgot before I went to Vietnam) is another non-silicone brand, Gift, which is probably better than Reveur, because it cleans sooooo well and my hair felt very soft and shiny afterwards. I used six packs of Gift shampoo and conditioner in Vietnam and my hair felt amazing those six days.

I gave Dear Jungle, also another new non-silicone hair care brand on the block, a go and I’m afraid it just didn’t clean my tresses well enough. My scalp would feel pretty oily early the next day and I just think it doesn’t have enough cleansing grunt. Maybe if you had a dry scalp, this would work for you.

I know I’m straying from the travel theme a bit but I promised a more in-depth review of Playback and can I just say I really love this? I think it cleans well and the conditioner doesn’t cause any acne along the hair line and my hair has never looked healthier. Seriously, my conclusion about silicone in haircare — try to avoid it or minimize use of it, if possible, because silicone seems to one of the main culprits in causing dull hair. So far most of the non-silicone brands I have tried have been great. I feel like non-silicone haircare was my 2011 discovery of the year.

Do you have any tips and tricks for keeping your hair looking fresh while travelling?

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Let’s have a bit of fun with photos on the blog, shall we? I’m crazy about photo apps on my iPhone, so instead of having tonnes of photos lined up vertically, I thought a collage would be easier on the eyes.

It’s the middle of November and why not share what I’ve been constantly using this month…

From the top left and clockwise:

Jo Malone’s English Pear & Freesia is perfect for the transition from autumn to winter in Tokyo. The afternoons are seriously quite warm but the nights are cool. The pear note is quite juicy but not summery like citrus notes are plus the dry down is a gorgeous milky musk. The staying power is not great but an excuse for a perfume fanatic like me to spritz myself with this more often!

Biteki is seriously one of favourite beauty rags in Tokyo — it’s has pages and pages of makeup and skincare which I love to stare at in the bath.

I’ve been smoothing a pump of Morrocan Oil through my hair daily and I just love how it’s not as oily as coconut oil or tsubaki oil but it’s very very very pricey at 3900JPY (plus shipping) so I hope that it lasts for a long time.

Speaking of coconut oil, I may not use this much on my hair but I love it in a salt scrub — best for dehydrated and acne-prone skin like mine.

From left and clockwise:

Dior’s purple travel palette has been my most-reached for eyeshadow palette this month, or rather only-reached for! I’ve been wearing lot of blue, gray, and black clothes this autumn so I love sporting a smokey purple look for my eyes. Detailed review to come soon.

Paul & Joe’s creamy light pink nail polish in 28 was something I painted on my nails repeatedly because it’s so dainty and feminine.

And my favourites would not be complete without a BB cream and this month’s fave is the Ettusias Mineral BB Cream which gives me a flawless, dewy complexion and somehow helps to control my skin from getting too oily. This is definitely worth a full review of its own.

And I can’t forget my Urban Decay Naked Palette! I had a really terrible morning as I woke up with rashes all over my face but the postman rang the door bell around 11am and delivered this to my doorstep. I was so happy to receive it and have been experimenting with different looks. I feel like I don’t really need to buy neutral colours for a while because the range in this palette is quite a amazing.

What are your faves this November?

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One of the strangest things for me in Japan beauty-wise is understanding haircare products here. It’s quite a departure from how things are in Singapore where you can easily find a solution to your scalp/hair type. Here, there is “shiny” （さらさら）and “moisturizing” （しっとり）which confounds me no end but I usually choose “shiny” for shampoos and “moisturizing” for conditioners, thinking that “shiny” is not as moisturizing as “moisturizing” and thus by deduction not for those with dry hair.

But to be honest, shampoos for “shiny” hair types are still pretty rich for my tropical scalp which needs heavy-duty action most days. Though in non-summer weather, it’s not so bad.

Then my fave magazine, Biteki, came to the rescue with this AWESOME article on non-silicone shampoos in its November issue, that gave the low down on what silicone does to your hair and a list of non-silicone haircare products on the market.

What does it have to do with my oily scalp, pray tell? Well, to my own logic, using a non-silicone shampoo can prevent build up and thus leaves the scalp/hair less bogged down and shinier as a result. And it opened my eyes up to brands I wouldn’t even have looked at twice.

Actually, non-silicone shampoo has made an appearance on drugstore shelves last year with Nudy Aura which I wrote about here. I loved it when I started using it and have been loving it ever since — it is truly a great brand. But, I still sort of didn’t believe it was that great (the shampoo is non-silicone but the conditioner still has silicones like dimethicone etc.) because it didn’t make sense that the conditioner has a chock-full of silicones so it felt like a bit gimmicky and I stopped purchasing the conditioner and continued with the shampoo (but I didn’t know much about this so on hindsight this was unnecessary; more on this later in the post).

Since then there has been a slew of non-silicone haircare products filling up the shelves in Japanese drugstores.

The advice given by some hair and beauty experts in the article is pretty much the same as what I’ve read elsewhere — you can only have healthy hair if you have a healthy scalp, i.e. unclogged, well-hydrated, and clean; silicones leave a coating on your hair which prevents much-needed moisture from being absorbed even if you use a moisturizing shampoo/conditioner to subsequently combat dull-looking hair.

Other tips I gleaned from the article: if your scalp has redness, it also means your hair is damaged, so ideally your scalp should be white, which means it’s healthy; you should rinse your hair for three minutes (that’s a really long time!) before you shampoo your hair and you should also take the time to massage the shampoo into your scalp; thus non-silicone shampoos will promote healthy hair and scalp.

So let me list the non-silicone haircare brands and I’ll link them to their official websites here (starting clockwise from left):

+ Gift
+ Nudy Aura
+ Playback
+ Difresca
+ Playback Mineral Moist (same site as Playback above)
+ La Pudeur
+ Salon Deaprès

In the end, I bought the green Playback set because it is the cheapest among all these brands but only by 300JPY per product. Generally, most of these non-silicone shampoos are around the 1900JPY price range which is really not bad though higher than the below 1,000JPY range for silicone shampoos.

I didn’t like the scent of La Pudeur because it had a really sickly sweet fragrance though the packaging looks quite pretty. I haven’t seen Gift or Difresca in my part of town. I’ve tried Nudy Aura and it smells amazing so this would remain a repeat in my shower stall. For the rest, I am curious about Salon Deaprès (which is also around the 1600-1700JPY price point) and especially the Playback Mineral Moist as it has 32 types of herbs and sea minerals like coral, pearl, collagen, keratin, amino acids etc.

As part of my non-silicone obsession, I also bought the non-silicone Honeysuckle Rose conditioner from Aubrey Organics for dry hair. I just want to try it out to see if it really makes a difference to my hair.

I have read that water-soluble silicones in conditioners are better than insoluble ones and I do spy silicones in the conditioners from the Japanese brands above. From my limited understanding, I would assume the ones they put in these products are water soluble silicones and though you can see insoluble silicones like dimethicone, they become soluble if tagged together with a soluble silicone or PEGs (comprehensive list on the Beauty Brains here). And I found a great list of non-silicone conditioners here if you are interested to try one.

I haven’t really used these products I bought and wouldn’t be fair to write a review now so will report back if these really are the bomb or not. But I will leave you with one last nugget: Reveur (offical site here) is also an excellent non-silicone haircare brand. Last year, I bought a bunch of their products in sample packs because I was off travelling as they are much easier to pack than even travel-sized bottles. Little did I know they were going to be so good. I remember thinking I had to get a full-sized set when I got back to Japan but I forgot about this brand. Biteki also has a short write-up on their website here — and it smells even better than Nudy Aura!

Do you care if your shampoo and conditioner have silicones? If you do, what brand are you using?

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I wasn’t in the mood to blog about beauty products for the past three weeks because it felt frivolous in the light of what happened to Japan. Though I think it’s appropriate to be more austere in saving electricity because there is a shortage of energy resources in eastern Japan, I believe that we should get back to living life as normally as possible. That includes injecting some much-needed moolah into Japan’s ailing economy…so I’m determined to shop as usual — nuthin’ is stoppin’ this beauty junkie.

I have a love-hate relationship with Japanese haircare products — the conditioners always work great, smell fabulous, but the shampoos are usually too rich and cause residue build-up quickly. I kept switching around — Shiseido Tsubaki Golden Repair (white), Shiseido Tsubaki Shining (red), Shiseido Tsubaki Head Spa (gold), Ascience, Shiseido Super Mild, H & S, Lux etc. They all worked well in the first two weeks but my hair felt dull and flat beyond that time frame. I still use the Tsubaki Golden Repair Treatment because it’s truly moisturizing and smells lovely.

So my latest “love” is Nudy Aura which was number one on Ranking Ranqueen three months ago. Yes, I used this consistently for three months before I came to a fair conclusion.

I was won over by the conditioner (I bought that first) but wasn’t so sure about the shampoo so I bought some sample packs to try while I went travelling. I used these packs three days in a row and my hair felt and looked great.

At first I thought the samples were too small for my long hair but the shampoo lathered very well so I could spread it out through my hair evenly and it felt clean despite a small palm sized amount. The conditioner was very moisturizing so a bit went a long way.

The key to what makes this a fab shampoo is that it says there is no silicone which typically weighs hair down with build-up after a while.

The conditioner has a slew of great ingredients — collagen, keratin, hyaluronic acid and so on so this works great on my thick, slightly wavy hair.

After I tried two packs of the samples (six in all), I bought a full-sized set and have been using it almost daily. I have no issues with build-up but I still use a clarifying shampoo once a week just to brighten my tresses. For the previous Japanese shampoos I tried, even using a clarifying shampoo once or twice a week didn’t get rid of the heaviness and dullness — what I mean by this is that when I used the clarifying shampoo, my hair went back to looking shiny and feeling light but once I switched back to my regular haircare products, my hair felt weighed down immediately. How in the world did I finish those shampoo/conditioner sets I didn’t like? I forayed into what the organic natural world (eg. Nature’s Gate) could offer me but they weren’t great in terms of giving shine and smoothing my slightly frizzy hair and alternated among three or four different brands in any given week.

But now I’ve pared down the number of haircare products in my bathroom to just Nudy Aura, The Body Shop Rainforest Balance Shampoo, and a tube of Shiseido Tsubaki Golden Repair Damage Care Treatment. Before blow drying my hair, I shake two drops of Oshima’s Tsubaki Oil and run my fingers through my hair. So far this routine works for me and I’m happy my bathroom is less cluttered.

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Ever since my two back-to-back trips to Australia and Moscow, I hardly had time to really relax and rewind.

When I returned home, I wanted to feel rejuvenated — my hair was dull, my skin felt like it had a lot of crap on it, my stomach bloated. I put myself on a gentle detox diet and got lots of rest.

My bathroom was empty of haircare so I went out to get some more. I stocked up on other “beautifying” thingamajigs (like my new foam net) and will post them soon. Let’s talk about hair for now.

I was definitely a classic case of buying products that “spoke” to me…haha…

Nature’s Gate Mandarain Orange and Patchouli Color Protecting Shampoo for normal or dull hair (hello, that’s me!). I absolutely LOVE this one. It cleans well but feel gentle — I don’t get that too-squeaky-clean texture with my previous Tsubaki shampoo; so I’m a happy bunny.

This Burt’s Bees Super Shiny Grapefruit & Sugar Beet Conditioner smells divine — fresh, citrus, slightly sweet. It gives me a pep in my step after using this. I’ve to say that this is not a very moisturizing conditioner and is a little too watery compared to what I am used to. I put some mustard seed oil in my hair for an hour during a workout session and washed it with the shampoo above and this conditioner and my hair got back its shine.

I would buy the shampoo again but not the conditioner. I have very long, thick hair that needs a heavy conditioner so this Burt’s Bees one was fun to try but not a keeper.

On a totally different note, Japanese magazines and mooks have crazy cute gifts lately. On some months, the offerings are at best daggy and unattractive but these past couple of months have very exciting offerings, like this Marc Jacobs Daisy purse pair from In Red magazine…

I’m using the red one as a purse to hold notes and cards — it’s so so so cute. As for the black one, I’ll use it as a casual clutch when I don’t need a big handbag.

Have a lovely weekend! I’m heading to Gunma (northwest of Tokyo) for a music festival. I’ll be camping….And I’ll show you my camping beauty essentials in an upcoming post!

P.S: Don’t forget to take part in our Kose Royal Jelly Essence Mask mini-giveaway here.

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I’m quite a fan of tsubaki oil, a Japanese hair tonic made from the camellia flower, so I had to try the new Essential Oil range that Shiseido put out under its Tsubaki umbrella.

I really wanted to like this but I actually don’t quite take to the scent of the shampoo. It’s a little minty and herbal in a bad way and my tresses feel clumpy after washing them and it makes me feel I need a very rich conditioner.

Luckily, the Tsubaki Essential Oil conditioner is just that. The fragrance is slightly better than the shampoo and my hair really does look shiny and smooth after using this set.

Would I buy this again? Only the conditioner, I’m afraid. I would recommend the white or red Tsubaki sets instead. FYI the red is more moisturizing and the white is lighter.

I’m quite random with haircare and would try anything that catches my fancy. Lately, I have become more careful of parabens and use Nature’s Gate Herbal shampoo and conditioner on alternate days. The conditioner is actually brown which grossed me out initially but it smells heavenly and not weird or herbal at all.

Onto other beauty things…

I love my local ksuriya because they always give me freebies when I shop there. Have a peek at what I got recently:

Coffret D’Or lipstick sample palette. I have always wanted to try this brand and glad to have an array of colours to try at my own pace. Sometimes I feel so stressed at cosmetics counters in Japan because there is always an SA who wants to help out.

Sana hair serum — might give this one a go when I travel to Nagano this weekend.

Above is a Nov skin care sample set that is not very appealing in its packaging. It seems gentle and suited for sensitive skin so I might use this on my trip too. I’m actually quite liberal with my skin and hair care if it’s just an overnight stay. If the products work — great, if not, I would at least know it’s not a good product.

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If you haven’t read Part One, here it is. I split this post into two parts because it became so l-o-n-g. For those who are interested in Japanese shampoo, this is a personal take on what a regular gal sees in a regular pharmacy, or kusuriya in Tokyo.

Japanese brands that are not by Shiseido

So, there are brands that thrive outside the omnipotent Shiseido umbrella.

On the left is H&S. This brand got rave reviews over at beauty ranking site, cosme. I gave it a go and liked it, but to be honest, it doesn’t give me gorgeous hair daily. It’s one of those shampoos which perform well but you wouldn’t use it before a special event.

On the right is Essential by Kao. I’ve not tried this simply because a Japanese friend said it was dame, which I think means, “Don’t try it. It’s cheap and nasty.” It’s probably one of the cheapest you will find in the shops here.

(more…)

In my other blog, I wrote a short lil’ piece on my then shampoo fave, Shiseido Super Mild, and it’s one of those posts that strangely got an amazing number of hits. I was wondering if I should write a follow-up and thought it would be more appropriate to do so here.

Before I kick things off, I have to clarify that I didn’t try every single brand and will include what my friends had to say.

When I first landed in Japan, I was concerned about living without my favourite products. If you wander into an average pharmacy, or kusuriya, you will see a few foreign brands but the rest are all made in Japan. It can look intimidating and you wouldn’t know where to start.

This is just a snapshot of what shampoos are sold in a popular pharmacy, called Matsumotokiyoshi. If you take a look online, there are loads more brands available in Japan, but frankly, I’ve yet to know where they are sold and if they are any good.

Tsubaki-infused products

Tsubaki oil, or camellia oil, is a traditional hair treatment in Japan and I’m certainly a fan of this tonic. I would recommend Shiseido’s white tsubaki shampoo over the red one because it feels lighter for my oily scalp. The treatment conditioner (in tube form) is excellent if you want your hair to be silky for a special occasion.

I’ve not tried the red bottles of tsubaki products in the photo on the far right, but I have been using the yellow bottle, a tsubaki conditioner, for a week now and I like the fluffy, soft effect it gives my long tresses. The name of this one is Sealand Tsubaki Oily Conditioner (you gotta love Japlish). The consistency is rather watery for a conditioner but it smells lovely in its gentle floral goodness.

I’ve tried Oshima tsubaki oil as a serum after washing and conditioning my hair and it made my hair really smooth. I think this is as Japanese you can get with your hair and I would highly recommend it.

Other Shiseido brands

It’s likely that several of the shampoos you spot in the shops belong to one brand, Shiseido. They own so many cosmetics and beauty ranges it’s impossible to keep track. Anyway, the products may be the same brand but they are not always of the same quality.

On the left is Super Mild and I find this to be a good daily shampoo (read reviews here) for those who have a normal/oily scalp. But after a month or so, I felt it left a pretty heavy residue so I stopped using it regularly. Nothing a clarifying shampoo can’t fix but you do get what you pay for. I find the cheaper shampoos tend not to be that great in some way or another.

On the right is Fino and a couple of girl friends have vouched for this. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the bottles and saw only the refill packs (another great thing about shampoo culture here). This is definitely on my “to-try” list.

Stay tuned for Part Two!

Since I have very long hair, conditioning it is serious business, and there are very few products that would impress me beyond the first couple of rinses.

I’m totally a fan of Kerastase, but it’s expensive to keep up, especially if you need a lot of it to make it work.

Since I was a teenager, I used oil on my hair to transform it from dull locks to mirror shiny tresses. Although I see some advice articles recommending a bit of oil to be smeared on after washing your hair, I prefer to oil my hair for at least half an hour and then shampoo it off. Normally, I would smooth some into my hair and tie it into a pony tail and then work out or run for an hour. The longer you leave in the oil, the more stunning your hair will look and feel.

(more…)

I think the word tsubaki, or the camellia flower, is more well known to people outside of Japan because of Shiseido’s lovely Tsubaki range (I would definitely choose Tsubaki White over Red as it’s less rich). It’s definitely affordable and looks really chic.

But from what I understand, there’s an “original” Tasubaki oil…

It’s something mothers and grandmothers use to protect their locks from the dry Japanese air. Or that’s what I think from the packaging (that’s my only complaint). Apparently it’s the number one Tsubaki product in Japan, according to top beauty review site cosme.

I actually tried it once when I stayed overnight at a Japanese ex-colleague’s home for a snowboarding trip. His wife fussed over me after my shower and offered some of her Oshima Tsubaki oil, which is 100 per cent pure oil.

I thought it made my hair glossy and soft to the touch — though I did come away thinking though it smelled very good, you would have to be careful not to put on too much. At the time, I had no idea where to purchase it.

One of the things I love about knowing how to read Japanese is I can sort of figure out which products are for what and I kind of understand what beauty product ads say.

I’m a big fan of Asience’s Beauty Mist, which is a conditioning spray that made my slightly wavy hair straight. With so many beauty products to try, I’m giving this the Beauty Mist a break.

Instead of the oil, I chose to try the Tsubaki tsuya tsuya water and I was surprised to find that it makes my hair so soft after blow-drying it. It also gave my hair a bit of bounce. Highly recommended and very affordable at 1050JPY for 150ml.

Update: After using this for a few weeks, I suddenly experienced acne and rash break outs on my neck. I juggled around my hair products and came to the conclusion that this spray has been the cause of my skin irritation. I’ve got sensitive skin but can take a little fragrance in my products, so I think my threshold is a little lower than your average gal.