Totes Kawaii: Japanese Beauty Panel Follow Up

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midnightsiren182
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Totes Kawaii: Japanese Beauty Panel Follow Up

Post by midnightsiren182 »

Hello beautiful nerds,

Since the panel ran over and there were more questions and comments, I've made this thread to continue the discussion a little and any feedback you might have and additional questions.

Thanks for putting up with my 'over-caffeinated yet super tired coupled with not feeling well' beauty blabbering. :)

You can find the powerpoint here, it was too large to attach: https://we.tl/t-A6XENHD0zC

If any of you have any other book or beauty references, please share! Some sources I referred to for this panel were www.livejapan.com, Face Paint by Lisa Eldridge, Pure Skin: Discovering the Japanese Ritual of Glowing, and Wikipedia for some cross-referencing.
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Re: Totes Kawaii: Japanese Beauty Panel Follow Up

Post by Niftylemons »

HELLO!
During the panel you wonderful people spoke of a place in Porter Sq that we may be able to find some skin care products. I am often in Porter, but I can't find it :cry: Does anyone know thr name of the place?
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Chocofreak13
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Re: Totes Kawaii: Japanese Beauty Panel Follow Up

Post by Chocofreak13 »

When you realize you're suuuuuper late to the party

Okay! so I was the one that mentioned the books and the shops and whatnot, so I'm gonna post some links and context~

The shop (I still don't know the name) was located on the first floor of The Shops at Porter, a small mall consisting mainly of ramen joints in a weird tiny hallway. It's located at 1815 Massachusetts Ave, under Lesley University (my former college, which is how I stumbled onto the place). The last time I was in that building was 2-3 years ago I believe, but from what I understand they were still going strong since there are so few places to carry Asian cosmetics in the city. According to this Yelp page, it may just be a Shiseido dealer, but I feel like I remember seeing signs for other brands there. Either way, it's worth a look.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-shops-at-p ... y&start=80

A second place I'm going to recommend for shopping isn't in Boston, but it's in MA, and likely reachable by MBTA (don't quote me on that); it's the H-Mart in Burlington, MA (3 Old Concord Rd, Burlington, MA). I'm mentioning this one specifically because, unlike the one in Cambridge, it's a standalone building, meaning that in addition to being a much larger grocery store, it's also got more space in front for other Asian goodies. It has the restaurant selection that the Cambridge one does (well, if in amount if not exact type), but it ALSO has a small gift shop filled with your typical Asian gift stuff (Sanrio, San-X, etc), but I recall they also had a makeup counter somewhere in there. This was YEARS ago (god I feel old), but the store's still there, so chances are the Asian beauty products are, too. The Cambridge one has a small cosmetics section (it's basically an endcap near the frozen goods and housewares, right after the produce section), but Burlington is worth a look if you haven't been there.

Now, onto the books!

Alright, first up is an unexpected beauty source: How to Draw Manga: Girls' Life Illustration File. Basically, the intent behind this book was a peek into the lives of actual Japanese high school girls (the characters in the book, of which there are 6, are all based on actual people via interviews the authors did with teenage girls. They have names, and none of the details are fictional, to my knowledge). As a result, we get an idea of their hobbies, habits, routines, etc. This book is actually how I learned about things like skin milk, lightening cream, bath oil beads, etc. when I was a wee lad. There's also a guide on how to tie an obi on a yukata, and though it's sort of bare-bones, if you want to try wearing one, it's completely accurate and I still tie them that way to this day. It's a bit dated (pretty sure the books from the 90's or early 00's), but it's still pretty cool, if only as a snapshot of the past.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Manga-1 ... 4766113381

Next up, we have Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno and Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential. I'm lumping these two together because they're quite similar, despite being from different publishers and authors. There are some interesting differences that make it worth buying both, however: Inferno acts as something of a fashion history of sorts, starting in the 1960's with the Sukeban fashion culture and ending with the Gyaru culture of the late 00's. It includes interviews, interesting little profiles of 'must haves' for a particular fashion subgroup, and a tutorial or two (anyone remember me mentioning that I did Ganguro makeup for a class in high school? That one actually landed me in the office for an entire block due to dress code violation, lol). Nice, glossy pages featuring plenty of photo spreads and info about different points of the various subcultures make it an interesting read for J-Beauty and J-Fashion enthusiasts.
Confidential is different from Inferno in that, rather than being a time capsule, it tries to focus on Japanese Schoolgirls featured in multiple different aspects of culture, from fashion and beauty, to movies, to comics, etc. It also features nice, glossy pages, and has multiple, brief interviews with various girls from the Tokyo (?) area, talking about things they like. (The link I posted is for the Revised Edition; I don't know what sort of edits they've made, since I only have the original.)
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Schoolg ... 0811856909
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Schoolg ... 0804847398

Next up, we have the FRUiTS series of books, consisting of FRUiTS and FRESHFRUiTS. These are large and lovely photobooks of Harajuku street fashion, documented by the magazine FRUiTS, which has been keeping track of trends since 97', though its founder apparently ceased publication in 2017 because "There are no more cool kids to photograph." (Sidenote: pardon my french but this dude's a badass) They have an instagram apparently, @fruitsmag , but whether or not you're gonna find anything current is to be found out, I don't have an IG, so I can't check. While this is kind of getting off topic from J-Beauty strictly, they're still interesting books, especially if you're looking for inspiration regarding a total look. Yes, they're a bit 'retro' now (the first one having been published by PHAIDON in 01' and the second by them in 05'), the style itself is semi-timeless because the whole point of FRUiTS magazine was that they were looking for the trailblazers in Harajuku, not the people following the hot styles of the time. These people were originals, blending anything and everything they could together to achieve their looks. And remember, this was pre-instagram, pre-snapchat, pre-social media for the most part (like, Myspace was a thing, I'm pretty sure, and if anyone remembers GaiaOnline I had one of those around then, and of COURSE AiM chatrooms), so these people were LITERALLY just doing it for the aesthetic. And, corny as it sounds, that never goes out of style.
https://www.amazon.com/Fruits-Shoichi-A ... 0714840831
https://www.amazon.com/Fresh-Fruits-Sho ... 0714845108

As another sidenote here, PHAIDON put out several photobooks, not just FRUiTS, including one on Gothic Lolita, and continues to do so, so they're worth a look if you're interested in fashion meshing with beauty.
Btw, I stumbled onto an internet archive of FRUiTS magazine, so if you want a taste without paying, here ya go~
https://archive.org/details/fruitsmagazine

Manga that I could recommend off the top of my head would include titles like Flowers and Bees (Anno Moyoco, Viz Media), Stolen Hearts (this one's more about kimono culture than beauty; Sakamoto Miku, CDM Manga, out of print and never finished ;^; ), maybe High School Debut (Kawahara Kazune, Viz Media); movies like Kamikaze Girls, Love and Pop, and Bounce Ko-gals, and there's an odd anime called Bihada Ichizoku; I'm pretty sure it was a tie-in with some kind of skin care line, but it's still a very weird, soap-opera-esque anime done in a 70's shojo-comics style (think giant sparkle eyes, flowers everywhere, and overdramatic shock emotions), which makes it hilarious if you're willing to make fun of it. (I occasionally used it as a comedic threat against the teens in the anime clubs I ran--stop fighting or I'm making you watch the weird skincare anime!!)

For now, that's the jist of what I can remember that I have and have seen. Sorry I'm so late to the party here; I was on vacation during AB and it wasn't really a relaxing one at that, with rushing around, outside stress, etc; add to that transitioning jobs to one I kind of hate from one I kind of loved and you get a recipe for stress that means basically passing out when you get home. If I can remember anything else, I may update this, but for now if you want to chat or pick my brain about this sort of thing, I have a Steam (@Chocofreak887, also try StuffedNinja if you can't find me), a Facebook (Kari Roulet-Little; look for an illustration of a screaming bearded man), and a discord (Chocofreak13#7283 ). I also have an account on the Dream Girlfriend app (if anyone here uses it?) and a Twitter (same as Steam).

Also, although I detest plugging for our online shopping overlords, one of the best things you can do for random knowledge in this regard is troll Amazon for books. Buy em' used, use the links I gave you to start, and open a few tabs with "Buyers who bought this also got..." recommendations and whatever else the author has published (just click their name in the Amazon listing). My personal favourites would be Girls' Life Illustration File and Inferno, just because they cover such a wide range of topics that I rarely see talked about anywhere else. Did you know that there were all-female biker gangs in the 80's and 90's, that they formed the basis for mascots and movies and they had their own magazine? Inferno has an entire chapter on that, including what their makeup and general look was like, and I NEVER see it brought up in stuff about J-fashion. For those in the Northeast, Christmas Tree Shop carries Korean sheet masks; I know this is about J-beauty, but for those of us who just want to get nice glowy skin but only have like $3 till Friday, these rock. Walmart has them too now, lol. Got a Cactus Gel one I might do later today~

Hit me up beauty peeps. I love you all and this was super fun to attend and to write. ^w^

PS: If you're extra-special-super-poor like me, consider looking up old beauty hacks; I found out through Readers' Digest of all things that buttermilk is good for age spots and discolouration. I plan on trying to make my own masks of some sort using stuff like that.~*
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