I don’t splurge often. I am pretty good at not spending money, but before I left Tokyo in August, I had decided to buy myself a small mac (an 11″ air which I have named “Happy Meal”) so I wouldn’t ruin my shoulders carrying the bigger one (called “Big Mac”) to classes every day. When I got to the Apple store, this handbag from Michael Kors caught my eye. It was love at first sight. I don’t buy a lot of brand stuff just because it is brand stuff, but this bag just screamed out to me. I justified it for myself by thinking that well… it IS a laptop-bag, because it DOES have a laptop compartment inside of it. And hey, since I already was in such a great splurging mode, I bought myself a little treat in the white bag to make my day complete. ♥

And then I went home, and opened up the box. The smell of a new mac…. aaaahhh! One of my favorite things in this world.

My iPhone is getting pretty old and slow, so obviously I needed to get a new charm to freshen the poor old trooper up. I found this cute budgie-piercing (What on earth do you call them in English? In Japan everyone just calls them ピアス (piasu)?) over at Village Vanguard in Shimokitasawa. It seems like the piercings for phones are getting quite popular in Japan lately, since the iPhone doesn’t have any hook or hole that you can attach regular cell-phone-strap-bling. The piercings just plug right into the mic.

Even though I have posted a couple of pictures lately, I haven’t been writing much at all. Maybe I have lost my words, maybe I am more reluctant than before to wear my heart on my sleeve and write about anything remotely personal, Idk. Last week I started something which is incredibly scary to me. I started working out and eating better. I haven’t worked out or cared about what I stuffed in my body for the past three years. Three years. Yes, that is pretty embarrassing, but it is better to start late than never, right? Maybe I am scared because it requires a real effort. It’s hard to cheat your way to better longterm health. No shortcuts will last long term, and to be honest, that scares the shit out of me. But here I am, the running shoes are bought, and I am ready to put in what it takes. At least I hope I am. (& things are being tracked at myfitnesspal.com and runkeeper.com) Go go go.

Isn’t this beautiful? And the best part – it is the real deal! No fake plastic, but a real authentic one from the seventies. I am a bit unsure about how I feel about wearing things which can make me be perceived as religious, but I like the bracelet. At least I can take pretty pictures of it. The long golden snake-like charm reminds me of the golden poop-building in Asakusa. (For those of you who have been to Asakusa, you know what I am talking about!) It made me smile.

I just have to recommend a shampoo – the Lush Big Shampoo. I rarely write about beauty products, I just don’t think I know enough about these things to write a lot about them, but this one just need to be mentioned. My hair is pretty thin and fine, so whenever I am in Japan, it turns completely flat, frizzy at the ends and oily at the top, and I have been trying to fix it for ages. I went and bought this shampoo (even though it was kind of pricey… ) – and it really did make the hair BIG! I was really surprised, because I rarely find products to actually live up to their descriptions and expectations. The consistency of the shampoo is really weird, with lots of big salt grains, and your hair ends up smelling like a mojito, but it did make the hair fluffy and removed the excess oil from the hair.

Just a mindless post about my new hair! Or actually, it is not entirely new, I bought it in Japan a couple of months ago, but I put it in a box when I was going back to uni now, and it finally arrived by sea mail last week! Compared to how cheap it is, it works pretty ok, especially under a hat. Homepage for brand is here: http://www.prisila.jp/. They have quite a few cute styles available, but a few of them are a bit too over the top for my taste, but I am sure other people can pull of some of these better than I.

I went on a little etsy hunt to find some cute items (yes, this is fun to do when you are broke), and I found these cute sushi-related items. I wanted to show them, in case somebody with free spending money might like them. Click on the picture to go to the etsy page for each item.

(I really like the quality of the rice grains in the above pair of earrings.)

(& this would definitely have made me happy if I were to look down at my hand! I love love love the details!)

(If my imaginary dog Pugsley was real, this would be his collar.)

(Look at the cute tobiko!)

(Simple but cute pendant.)

(Not quite sure about the quality of this pencil case, but the idea is really great.)

(And another pair of earrings. A little to flashy for me right now, but I still love the concept.)

Whistles Autumn/Winter 2011 from WHISTLES on Vimeo.

Look at all the pretty clothes! If I would have had money left over, I would have bought several pieces from this collection, but I am trying a pretty hard-core saving strategy for this fall, so I have to settle for watching these beautiful videos instead.

I thought it was about time for another outfit post, just for fun. Have a lovely Friday everyone!

I haven’t been able to blog as much as I would have liked to this week, but I have a really good excuse, I got my one of my wisdom teeth extracted. I am in the national health insurance program in Japan, so the final bill was incredibly cheap. I don’t understand why Norway does not have a similar system when it comes to dental programs, seems like teeth are not part of the body in Norway? Anyhow, I wanted a check up just to make sure everything is fine and dandy, and called the dentist to find out how long I had to wait until I could get an appointment – they booked me in for 4 hours after the phone call. Once the check up was done (no cavities and clean teeth!) I wanted to book another appointment to get my wisdom tooth extracted. I thought I might have to wait for a couple of days/weeks for an opening, but oh no, 24 hours later I was back to get the little sucker pulled out. The waiting time was so short I almost did not have time to build up the usual amount of ungrounded dentist-fear. If you are not impressed with the efficiency yet, I could mention that my appointment was at 18:00, and at 18:15 I was done and out of there, local anesthetic included. And it didn’t even hurt as much as I thought it would.