+ Whoo, it’s hawt right now. Ever wondered how Japanese women look perfectly coiffed in the sweltering humidity? Underarm sweat absorbent pads, facial oil removing sheets, and Maquillage’s Styling Keep Base UV that helps to prevent your foundation from running.

+ According to the grapevine, there is a new bra, Bust-O Appu, in Japan that pulls the fat from your back to your front that gives a more bountiful appearance. Being Asian, I can understand the obsession with bigger boobs. There are always these products that claim to lift things up in the mammary department: F-cup cookie and Bust-up gum. Yes, you eat them. I heard that wild yam root helps, too.

+ Lots of watermelon to keep cool; peaches to slurp on; sleeveless tops that feel sexy.

Drinking lots of iced lemon water to keep cool,
Yu Ming

Photo credit: here

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The minimalist lines of the bottle remind me of the early stripped down nineties. Remember Calvin Klein’s CK One?

But I’m sure the juice will be completely different. Apparently A Scent is green and I adore fresh green scents especially in hot weather.

His classic signature fragrance made 17 years ago didn’t sit well with me. I had to possess it, but being the foolish teen I was, it was too late when I realized the oceanic (or “watery”) notes just didn’t suit my sweaty skin in humid Singapore.

The only downer is this gem is not available now: it will be available in August for a short while, and then it launches officially in October.

Waiting with bated breath,
Yu Ming

PS: There is a moving excerpt here about Issey Miyake’s experience of Hiroshima when it was bombed in WWII and why he’s speaking out now. Powerful, indeed.

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If you’re wondering why your skin isn’t reaching the level of radiance you want, maybe you need to look deeper into the food you’re putting into your body.

As they say, you are what you eat and what goes in will come out.

Here are 7 tips to munch your way to lasting luscious skin…

Cut down on meat and dairy.
By consuming such food, you are also taking in a lot of the hormones that were injected into cows and chicken to make them grow faster and bigger. I know it’s hard to change life-long eating habits, but if you are suffering acne and eczema that won’t go away, you may want to consider this option.

Eat good fats.
Keep wrinkles and papery skin at bay by noshing on Nature’s moisturizers. Make your cells plump and supple through omega-fatty acids. If mercury in fish (salmon and mackerel) unnerves you, walnuts, avocados, flax seed, and olive oil are good plant-based sources.

Load up on vitamin C and silica.
These two building blocks of collagen are necessary for keeping skin elastic. Fruit and veggies high in vitamin C: peppers, broccoli, kiwi, strawberries, mangoes, avocados, onions, collard greens, and all citrus fruit. Now, cucumbers are high in silica so crunching on these are great for you, too!

A perfect summer recipe is a simple mix of strawberries and cucumbers drizzled with a bit of lemon juice. Can you tell this is sooooo yummy for your taste buds and your skin?

Soak up vitamin A to renew skin
Vitamin A is necessary to renew and grow skin cells, so carrots, mangoes, spinach and apricots are great sources.

Protect your skin from the sun
Tomatoes and carrots have lycopene that is a natural sun screen and shields your skin from harmful rays. Wrinkles, be gone!

Keep hydrated
You probably see this point in most health articles but really there is a lot of truth in it. It’s all to easy to think you are drinking enough fluids — what with coffee and tea breaks or diet sodas. But nothing beats pure water or fresh juice.

If you don’t like the blandness of water, try squeezing a lemon or lime into a large glass and it will be completely transformed. Or treat yourself to a San Pellegrino or Evian to quench your thirst and bathe your skin cells with hydration.

Avoid too much refined sugar.
Sugar degrades the elastin and collagen in your skin faster. I wrote a whole post right here about how sugar makes you look old, so I won’t repeat myself.

Switch to dark chocolate.
It’s not really chocolate itself that causes pimples, but dairy does. I know dairy companies with deep pockets run massive campaigns about why it’s good for you but hormone-riddled milk in chocolate is the cause of flare-ups.

But don’t spoil the party of life by cutting out chocolate, just switch to dark ones or vegan chocolate.

Photo credit: here

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Every other Thursday, I’ll post news about what’s hot in Tokyo for women. I know there are many Jap-mad gals out there and there’s just so much stuff going on here in the Big Mikan (an affectionate pet name for Tokyo; means big orange — go figure).

+ ‘Tis the rainy season so rain-resistant rubber boots are all the rage. I always associated them with construction workers and little kiddies, but Japanese women sure make them look ultra-chic and cute.

+ A new after-hours café in Shibuya gives out product samples for women. From 12am – 4.30am, gals can hang out and feel comfortable with women’s magazines and touch with hand mirrors. How does it all work? If you buy a drink or snack, you’ll get tokens and you can swap them for samples. I can feel it in my bones that it will definitely be new cosmetics and beauty products galore.

Aren’t those crazy hours to be trying on lip-gloss? Well, most people here take the train and if you miss your last train (usually around midnight to 1am), taking a taxi is not an option because of the astronomical rates (a 45-minute ride costs 20,000JPY or USD200), so what’s a girl to do?

Some check into a karaoke room as they are 24-hour places; or if there’s a boy involved, a love hotel is a cheap way to spend the night (8,000JPY; USD80); and now a sample product café. Cool.

+ Coca-cola released a new drink: green tea infused diet Coke. Not that I’m a fan of any kind of caffeine or soda pop, but it’s amazing how huge companies are targeting women all the time in product campaigns. I heard that the biggest market to tap on is the cash-rich oba-sans (mature women) who splurge on their adult daughters and themselves to designer bags and expensive cosmetics.

Photo credit: here

*Edit: I changed the title of this column to Things I Love In Tokyo because a) I truly admire Gala Darling’s Things I Love Thursday — she shows me how to appreciate the little things in life, fashion, and her TiLT posts make my soul overflow with creativity and passion b) show what’s great about Tokyo and continue to love it myself while sharing nuggets of info with others who do, too c) It’s really a better title than the clinical “Tokyo Trendspotting”. Writing in the blog universe lets you improve and change at the conjure of a click in our post-modernist times. We patch together what we encounter in the past and make it our future. Hope you enjoy my upcoming installments.

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I’ll put my hand up and admit I put on almost 20 pounds over several years due to comfort eating. I just thought I “loved” pasta, but pasta didn’t love me back — I couldn’t buckle my jeans up without a struggle and my thighs grew a bit too close for comfort. I have a rather petite frame so excess weight truly shows up.

It wasn’t until I discovered the raw food lifestyle that I started thinking about why I ate so much. On the sly, I munched my way through bags of chips in front of the TV, or in public, when I declared myself a “foodie” and indulged in rich gourmet fare.

So it’s no wonder that a few recent health articles in the news caught my attention about binge eating and the connection between food and emotions. Everyone has an intimate relationship with food whether you realize it or not.

How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains addresses the root of overeating, but it doesn’t provide any solutions to solve the problem. An interesting read anyway and it will make you think twice before you reach for a Snickers bar.

The next article that whetted my appetite further was an interview with former tennis champ Monica Seles, Monica Seles Talks About Binge Eating, where she reveals years of struggling with emotional eating and being out of balance. I felt my heart strings tug when she said others noticed her weight gain, “She is so much bigger than she used to be.” Hello, that was me!

I could even relate more when she put on the pounds despite playing tennis for five hours daily. I used to work out almost daily or every other day but I ate badly (bread, pasta, noodles were my toxic friends) and the weight crept on. At 30, I found myself retrenched and was 20 pounds over my ideal weight. I ate for comfort and because I was lonely. I think being an expat in a foreign country had a lot to do with it — I have friends but they are not the same as the best friends you’ve had since you were little; my boyfriend was always far away on business trips; my family was not around. Food became my closest ally.

Honestly I don’t think emotional eating is overly complex. People eat because they are stressed, unloved, have unresolved issues, want to escape etc. There are whole industries that cater to the sport of eating. Look at Nigella Lawson: her food is gorgeous, and the thing is, she always makes her creations ooze with divine comfort and therefore a legitimate reason to indulge. It’s so criminal you have to…

But how do you get from being aware that you binge eat for comfort to not needing to turn to food when things get rough?

You may pooh-pooh at suggestions like “take a hot bath”, or “call a friend”, because they don’t replace that enveloping cocoon-like fullness of refined carbohydrates. They really don’t.

A more immediate solution when I face such a mental crisis is to have healthy alternatives. It doesn’t solve the root of your emotional problem but your waistline will thank you for it.

For the long run, I don’t have a straightforward answer to resolving your issues and my gut-feel is it’s a long, hard road: you have to change the direction of where your mind goes when you are tempted to eat a lot of junk. For example, Monica Seles goes for a walk to readjust her thinking and rationalizes why she needs that particular food she is craving. It is seriously mind over matter. Sounds a little clichéd but do you really want to be controlled by corn chips, cookies, and all manner of faux food?

Photo credits: here, here, and here

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Well, actually my sister introduced me to her new night moisturizer: Fruit of the Earth Vitamin E Skin Care Oil (SGD29; USD20) blended with aloe vera gel from the same brand.

“It’s so sticky!” is the first thing you might think of pure vitamin E oil, and it is. It has the consistency of honey but becomes very easy to apply if you mix three drops of the oil with a dab of aloe.

My sister discovered this natural and effective moisturizing idea from Makeup Alley where this product got rave reviews for its powerful effect on getting rid of blemishes. I don’t think it prevents acne but it certainly heals spots much quicker than regular acne treatments.

Won over by my sister’s vote of confidence, I tried this combination overnight and it left my skin soft and smooth. Most mornings my skin tends to feel a bit oily, especially in Singapore where the weather is hot and humid, but after using vitamin E oil, my skin had a more silky tone than usual.

I know that using it one time is not an accurate picture of how effective a product is but I’m keen on taking a bottle back to Japan to give it a go in my regular regime. My sister said her skin was affected by blemishes for a while, so she surfed around for a solution and she hasn’t looked back since. It’s been several months now and her face is very clear and void of unwanted bumps and humps!

After poking around the Internet, I discovered that Fruit of the Earth is an American company but unfortunately they do not sell their products in Japan. Looks like I need to stock this one up or buy online if I like it very much.

Would like to leave a question for you: do you have any HG (Holy Grail in Makeup Alley speak) products that are not available in your country? If so, how do you make sure you have stock of your fave item?

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Today’s video answers an FAQ I get all the time: “How many tablespoons of collagen should I take everyday?”

This really only applies to those who don’t want to buy the tin (that has the special Meiji 5,000mg spoon) and prefer the refills, which come without the spoon.

It’s quite hard for me to gauge for my customers and my read is American tablespoons and teaspoons are different from the ones in Japan.

What I’ve done is to measure the length and width of my Japanese tablespoon (2 x 1.2 inches) and I need two of these to give me my daily dosage of collagen. I hope this can help you in gauging for your own spoons.

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We’re all pretty well-educated on how bad the sun is for our skin and it’s normal to see the words “SPF” on our cosmetics and beauty products. But there is one more thing that is even more invisible that causes wrinkles: SUGAR.

While I don’t think it’s possible to rule out sugar from our diet completely, it’s probably a good idea to decrease our intake of it.

Here are three reasons to make you sit up and pay attention:

#1 Sugar in your blood combines with proteins to form harmful molecules called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). So these bad boys attack collagen and elastin — the stuff that makes your skin smooth and supple.

#2 AGEs transform collagen to be more fragile. When this happens, your skin looks and feels less plump.

#3 AGEs make your body’s anti-oxidant enzymes useless which then leaves your skin more vulnerable to sun damage — still a main cause for aging.

How do we move on from here - what’s life without a bit of sweetness?

+ The key is to cut down on the refined sugar (soda, sugar in your coffee, pre-packaged food, cereal) and hidden sweeteners. Look out for words like maltose, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, turbinado, juice concentrate.

+ Pay attention to how much sugar you are consuming daily. Each teaspoon of sugar is equal to 4g and the recommended daily dose of sugar for a woman over 40 is 10 teaspoons (160 calories). Sugar shouldn’t be more than 10 per cent of your daily calorie intake.

+ Go for natural sugar replacements like stevia since artificial sweeteners have their own set of problems.

+ Chug water instead of soda. Not only is it better for your skin but you will feel more alert, too, by keeping dehydration at bay.

+ Go sugar-less when you have your tea or coffee. I used to dump two teaspoons of sugar and half a glass of milk into my cuppa years ago. But when I started putting on the pounds and my energy levels plummeted, I switched to taking tea and coffee without sugar and I developed an appreciation for subtler flavours.

+ Vitamins B1 and B6 prevent AGEs from forming so try to pop a Vitamin B complex or multi-vitamin daily.

+ Stock up on more anti-oxidants in your body by eating high anti-oxidant fruit and veggies like red bell peppers, walnuts, and berries.

+ Look out for aminoguanidine and alistin in your beauty products as they block the formation of AGEs in your skin.

Photo: Daneli

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Several of my Japanese gal pals mentioned that they love this product and wish they could fly to Seoul to pick some up at ridiculously cheap prices, because as most things go, the ones in Japan are quite pricey.

Being the ressionista that I am, I will wait till my current stash of foundation is used up (which is one and a half bottles — sadness).

But, this hasn’t stopped me from wanting to find out more and when the time comes, my fingers will be ready to spread this magic paste on my face. Today, I’d like to share with you what I have found out about BB Cream.

What is BB Cream?
The double B stands for “blemish balm” and its infamy started when a Korean actress underwent laser surgery on her face and she used BB Cream as part of her post-surgery regime.

It was touted to be a healing cream while acting as a way to cover up flaws. By the way, the technology originated from Germany but the Koreans made BB Cream huge in this part of the world.

To put it simply, BB Cream is a foundation that helps your skin rid itself of flaws and softens skin texture over time.

I don’t think it’s one of those products that make you wake up with a new face the next day but with prolonged use, it should improve the quality of your skin.

Who uses BB Cream?
Lots of women, even celebrities — particularly North Asians where the rage started. Southeast Asia is also embracing it but I do wonder if Western markets are interested at all. I do see some US online stores that carry it but I don’t really feel that the hype lasted long from what I see in various high-profile beauty blogs.

Does BB Cream work?
I don’t know. It’s one of those things where some people rave about it and some people diss it.

The raves: all-in-one beauty wonder that usually does all or several of the following products — moisturizer, SPF, acne treatment, wrinkle cream, concealer, and whitening action; flawless finish; improves skin; apparently duskier skin shades can take the single-tone BB Cream but you need to wait for it to oxidize, so it will “blend” into your skin tone.

The criticism: only one or two tones are available and they’re usually suited for fair, yellow tone Asian skin; causes breakouts; and it’s too moisturizing for oily skin; it’s too drying (contrasting reviews always plague products!).

Which are the good brands of BB Cream?
From what I gathered in blogs, shops, and word-of-mouth, there are a handful of very good ones.

Missha gets a lot of excellent reviews and a couple of my friends swear by it.

Skinfood is one of the better known brands but there seems to be many complaints about it in Makeup Alley despite the fact that it includes lots of plant-based ingredients to entice those who love natural products.

Etude House gets some mention but to conflicting opinions. One blogger said it is hard to blend; another said it blends beautifully; but both agreed that the cream only conceals to a certain degree and not all flaws.

Hanskin is definitely above average and got good reviews here, here, and here.

Sinn in Japan seems to be so popular that it gets sold out quickly. It’s the only Japanese BB Cream brand that I’ve heard of.

BRTC is apparently a top-notch BB Cream brand. It’s expensive but truly does the job. The packaging looks a little clinical but I guess it’s what is inside that matters.

Just out of interest, I thought some of you may be keen to read Viva Woman’s experience in making her own DIY BB Cream. It’s truly amazing when the stuff that comes from people in lab coats can be brewed by the average woman.

Alright this wraps up my BB Cream resource research. My conclusion is not to skimp and buy a good brand; start with a small tube; hope for the best; and worst case scenario you can always do a swap.

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This week’s episode talks about mixing Meiji Amino Collagen with herbal tea. It’s great hot or iced — amino collagen does not change its properties in higher temperatures.

A lot of women ask me what amino collagen tastes like and I don’t really have an answer except, “It’s got a very mild taste.”

Some folks think it smells like coffee creamer or a bit medicinal or a bit fishy, and some can’t even pinpoint what it is because it’s just so subtle. but really, it depends on the person and how sensitive you are to an extra something in your drink.

Try amino collagen with mint, lemongrass, ginger, chamomile, or rosehip…The choice is really yours.

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