Shopping in Japan

I probably wrote this here already, but my policy of living in Australia is "when in Rome, do as the Romans do". Sometimes I miss Japanese style customer service or little handy Japanese products, but I try to be happy with what I can get here. 

However there are some goods I always get from Japan.

tooth brush
Simply because it's cheaper over there. You can get a pretty good one under $2 in Japan usually and the 100 yen ($1) shop ones aren't bad at all. When I came to Australia for the first time, I was shocked how expensive tooth brushes were. Also, the head part is too big and it's hard to brush the back teeth, at least for me. I always get 3-5 tooth brushes!

Japanese toothbrush (top) and Australian toothbrush

Socks
Socks are cheaper and better quality with more designs in Japan. It's often 3 for $10... I also get tights for winter. They are usually 2 for $10-12. If you wear stockings, I do recommend buying Japanese ones there. You'll be impressed!

I often hear that people are thinking how expensive things are in Japan, but it's not true. They do sometimes have crazy prices, like some special melon for $100. Or if you try to have a coffee in Ginza, it's sometimes $9. But those things are just for some special people who want to spend money!

For example, I feel eating out in Australia is super expensive! 
In Japan, if you pay $50, you can get pretty nice French 3 course dinner. Breakfast never costs more than $10! Lunch set menu is often around $10 -15 with coffee and dessert. If you get sandwiches and a drink from 7eleven, it's definitely under $4.

I read that the average Japanese salary is about 45k and even the average of top industry, like the financial industry, is about 75k, so things have to be cheaper there. If you have visited Japan or lived there before, probably you know what I mean. What did you feel cheaper over there?

So don't be discouraged to go to Japan just because you think it's expensive! Of course it's more expensive than other Asian countries, but things are often cheaper than Australia.

Do you have any plan to go to Japan soon? Don't forget to put toothbrushes and socks in your shopping list;)

With love,
Allie

cookpad

I hope everyone had a lovely Mother's Day last Sunday. Me? I had a wonderful day with my boys. I got lovely gifts, cards and flowers from Paul and Nico and also Paul made yummy breakfast for me. I was spoiled!


My Mother's Day gifts

-IKEA iPad holder

-double gauze hand towel from nuno and stitch

These two items make my cooking time in the kitchen extra fun!

I often use a website called "Cookpad" for some great recipes. It's a Japanese website so you might not be able to read it, but people can post their own recipes to this website and you can find thousands of recipes there. You often know which one is a good recipe from the number of reports from people who say they used that recipe.

They upload their own dishes and leave a comment on that recipe like " I cooked this dish twice already and my family absolutely love it! " or " I made this dish using apple instead of strawberries and it works well too". I think most Japanese mums are now using this website...even my mum!

Hopefully I can write a report on some of the cook pad recipes here and share them with you someday:-)
With love,
Allie

Something I learned through our renovation

I am a typical Japanese person. I can't really rock the boat. I'm not good at speaking up at all, but I learned something new through our renovation experience. If you don't say something, you don't get anything! 

For our carpets, we used a local shop. I went there and paid in full before the installation because they said they needed to cut the carpet to the size once I ordered. I didn't argue. 

We booked the carpet installation for Thursday morning and we booked our move in for Friday. I went to our new home Thursday afternoon to do the final cleaning before moving in. I was pretty impressed by the carpet and was happy with the work they'd done, but when I was vacuuming I noticed one part of Nico's bedroom carpet had a big cut. I was a bit panicked! I was sure that the carpet shop would fix it but wasn't sure they could do it before Friday morning. 

I called up our project manager Maria but couldn't get through, so I went to the shop (it was nearly 3 pm) and told them there was a big cut on the carpet and showed them the photo. The shop owner said "ah, that's easy to fix. I'll send someone tomorrow morning" and then I said "Ok! Thanks." After that, Maria called me back after reading my text message and seeing the photo of the carpet. "How do they fix it?" she asked and I said "dunno, but they said it's easy." 

She came to the site and said "I think it's not that easy. They shouldn't just cut one part and join it, they should change the whole thing because you paid for carpet without a join. " Probably the carpet shop took advantage because I didn't know anything about carpet and didn't argue at all. They must have thought it's easy because I'm the EASY one.. 

Maria called up the carpet shop and asked how they would fix it. The carpet shop said they have no more of the same carpet and it's a discontinued item, so there's no way they can change the whole thing. Well maybe that might have been true, but their attitude made us think that they just didn't want to change whole thing. 

Maria and Paul's dad went to the shop and negotiated. In the end, we had to have one join but got $200 back. That was pretty good for us. 

Paul's dad advised me not to pay in full before the job's done from next time. Once they get money, sometimes they can just walk away from this kind of trouble. 

There's one extra story behind this carpet trouble. When Maria was calling up the carpet shop in Nico's new bedroom, I was putting a lampshade in our new bedroom. When Maria finished talking, she went to the lounge to see what her 1year old son Luca was doing and then I heard her scream!! I could tell something really serious happened from her scream. I thought Luca fell down from a ladder or something. 

When I went in the lounge, I saw that Maria and Paul's dad were trying to grab Luca's hand - he was holding a paint brush. And then I saw red paint everywhere on our new white kitchen cupboard - I was painting our front door in red and left the brush near the kitchen. 

Thankfully all the red paint was removed with turps, so now we can laugh about it. We even think we should have taken a photo of Luca doing that. It was definitely the most dramatic and funniest thing that happened throughout our renovation. 


With love, 
Allie 

We've moved!

We finally moved to our new home two weeks ago. We also had our own charity market "Little Keeper's Market" last weekend, so since we moved, we've been very busy, but now we have some time to sort things out around our new home and watch TV after Nico's gone to sleep...

Our linen cupboard isn't ready yet, so all my boxes with nuno and stitch products are in our spare room and there's no space to walk through there. To cut the costs, we asked the cabinet maker to cut all the boards for the shelves into the right size and Paul's dad and his sister are putting them together for us. Also in our lounge area, we have heaps of chairs and it still looks messy. We're making our dining table now so that all my collection of chairs can fit around the table (now we have 80 diameter round dining table and can accommodate only 4 chairs-we have 6 chairs! ).

So I wanted to take a little bit styled photo of our new home to show off to everyone, but all we can show you now is our messy home photo unfortunately:p we will need a little bit more time before we invite our friends over too.

This is our kitchen. The kitchen and the lounge were separated before and each room looked dark, but now with two big windows, it's much lighter! I really love this open space because I can see Nico and Paul playing while I'm cooking.  We love these square subway tiles and black kitchen handles. We love the colour of our bench top.

Nico's enjoying his brekky in our light filled lounge

 

 

 

This is our bathroom/laundry. Our basin is quite small so I'm using the kitchen sink for washing, but I like it because I can see Nico in the lounge while I'm doing the washing too! It's quite a small space, but not over crowded thanks to our designer Maria:-) we love the skylight!

 

Nico's room
This was the room with paint over wallpaper! Now it looks great:-) we love having carpet in bedrooms.

All our renovation went pretty well but we had some dramas just the day before moved in. I will write about it soon!

With love,
Allie

What is little keeper's market? My new challenge

One day my sister-in-law and good friend Maria told me about how her friends were impressed by the softness and quality of our "herringbone scarf" and talked about how difficult it is for online shops to show the quality of their products. Her friend suggested that something like a Tupperware party, where I can show and tell about my products, might be good for my shop.

When I started to look for a venue, I found that: a) it's a bit pricey to hire venue for myself and b) it's too big just for myself - so then I decided to get someone else involved. I didn't really mean to organize a market myself, probably that's the last thing I wanted to do, because it's too challenging for someone like me who has "0" confidence in English (read here..) and no connection to locals. Well, probably I wouldn't do that in my own country Japan either...

When I tried to find people interested in a "Tupperware party" on Facebook, most of the other shops who were interested in my idea were "Tupperware types" of people.. I thought that's okay as long as we can share the cost, but Maria suggested that I stick to my branding and find some businesses similar to mine. I didn't have many connections, but I knew some lovely business people who have their own brand/shop, so I started asking them if they're interested. Probably how many people I can get to the event is the most important part of their decision making, and I didn't have confidence around that part..but somehow they agreed to join my event. That was very exciting. We decided that all the stall holders do their own marketing and invite friends and family and I would do a little bit extra by putting flyers to locals.


And then how did this event become fundraising event? My husband Paul said he could borrow a coffee machine from his work and raise money for charity and I thought that's a great idea. Around the same time, I heard from my best friend Yuri in Japan that one of her close friends got cancer and that she was in critical condition. I met that friend only once at Yuri's wedding in Japan a few years ago. She was living in Shanghai with her husband, but she came all the way to Japan for Yuri's wedding and I still remember she was in a beautiful kimono.

When she found out about her cancer, it wasn't really at an early stage. She had to come back to Kyushu, her hometown to have a surgery. When Yuri told me she went to Kyushu for a day trip to see her at hospital, I realized that her condition was pretty bad because Kyushu is not a place where people make a day trip from Tokyo often (it's about 850 km away). When Yuri also told me she has a two year old boy, I felt like crying thinking about my own boy Nico. No mums want to leave such a small kid behind.

I used to say to Paul that I didn't care about my health. I could sacrifice myself for my family, so I didn't need rest. I always wanted to look after my family. But if they lose me, what would they do? I have to stay healthy for them...that's what I realized from Yuri's friend's story. Then I wondered if many mums might be the same, being too busy to think about their own health.


We picked the National Breast Cancer Foundation from many charities to support their good work, but our main purpose for this fundraising is to inspire people to think about their own health. I think everyone wants to make their family and friends happy, but without them, those people will be sad. 

Looking after yourself is not a bad thing. To treat yourself, have some afternoon tea and workshop at Little Keeper's Market and maybe get some nice pressie for yourself!

With love,
Allie

Our renovation updates

Probably some of you might be wondering how our renovation is going, so I'll keep you updated. All the work by our builder has been done, but we're still painting walls and the ceiling. I know it's very slow compared with those renovation TV shows, but this is the reality. Lucky we've got just a small space, but there's still many parts to paint.

I don't know what other people do, but what I learnt from my Aussie family is this.. If you want to do a proper painting job, for each room you need to do wall undercoat cutting-in, rolling, ceiling undercoat cutting-in, rolling, wall first topcoat cutting-in, rolling, ceiling first topcoat cutting-in, rolling, wall second topcoat cutting in, rolling, ceiling second topcoat cutting in, rolling. 12 steps for each room!!! (+ window frame, skirting boards, architraves and doors.)

Paul's parents are away quite a lot this month so one of us always had to stay with our little boy. Paul's sister (aka our project manager) Maria is helping us quite a lot, but she has a little boy too. Every night after our boys have gone to sleep, Maria and I go to the new house and paint...FYI Paul has just started his new job and he's pretty tired from it, so he stays with Nico. We still need to get up in the middle of the night for our toddlers so it's not easy. I used to do some of my work like writing my blog after Nico went to sleep, but I don't have time for that now :-(

Probably we'll be painting over this Easter long weekend. No time for fun. I'm so much looking forward to sitting on the couch and watching TV after dinner at our freshly painted new home!

Allie 

Sweet Home Project -Renovation Week 6

At the start of our renovation project, I wrote that this was going to be a 6 week project. So, did everything finish now? The answer is no!  But we don't blame our builder, because his work has almost finished before week 6. What I found during this project is that there is always some waiting time for other tradies, like the plumber, electrician, tiler etc. . It's difficult for them to come to our place at the exact timing we need them. If we ask for any plumber, any electrician, maybe some one could come I guess, but all builders have preferable or trustworthy tradies to work with and it's better to use them for a successful renovation.

our laundry cabinet in the bathroom

Anyway there are still some things to be done at our place.

Shaft for skylight (builder)
Kitchen doors (cabinet maker)
Laundry cabinet doors (cabinet maker)
Kitchen tiles (tiler)
Kitchen bench top (stonemason)
Floor sanding (floor specialist)
Carpeting (carpet specialist)
Painting (us)
Bath screen (bath screen specialist)

Probably if these people could come at the same time, our renovation would finish in one day even , but there is certain order too, like before floor sanding, we need to paint all the rooms, before carpeting, the floor needs sanding and after floor polishing, we need to leave a week to dry...etc.. We will need to wait 2-3weeks to move.

But actually this is much better than I expected. What I heard or read about renovations in Australia was worse. Like lazy builders who finish work at 2pm, tradies who never show up on the day they promised, inexperienced tradies who ruin everything and takes ages to fix up all the bad jobs... We never had these kinds of trouble. All the tradies who got involved in our renovation project did such wonderful professional jobs so far. I guess we are not just lucky. It's because our project manager Maria is organizing the right people and sometimes making sure they come on the right day.

Nico loves climbing boxes!

Our painting preparation is still going and our friends and family helped us with sanding over the last weekend. My sister even came from Sydney to look after our Nico for us to do some work. But I think she actually just missed her nephew too ;)


The worst nightmare we found at our new place was that the previous owner painted over some wallpaper in one of the bedrooms. Some parts of the wallpaper started to peel off or showed an ugly line, so we had to remove them, but since it's painted it's difficult to remove. Paul's parents, his sister, my sister and me were doing this scraping job in turns last Sunday, but it will take more time to finish this.

With love,
Allie