Seriously Good Smelling Stuff

LUSH! Why have I never heard of them before? I've been missing out. When we were strolling around Roppongi in Tokyo we happened upon this handmade cosmetics store. The other girls knew about this, but I was a Lush neophyte. This Lush in Japan was pretty incredible, but everything was in Japanese so I only had my nose to guide me. There was a store lady there who spoke a bit of English, but for the most part we had to figure it out for ourselves.


They had a huge table covered with giant hunks of soap. These smelled incredible, but I fell in love with one in particular. I loved the smell. It turns out it was the Figs and Leaves soap. The website explains that figs are wonderfully nutritious and good for your body, and their little brown seeds exfoliate the skin and aloe vera extract has soothing properties. The scent is the best part: floral, orange blossom and ylang ylang "with an undertone of eastern exoticism." Lush claims this "soap is one of our sexiest." No wonder I loved the smell of it! I also love that this soap is vegan.

I also bought this Vanilla and Jasmine bath bomb. I haven't used it yet, but it smells incredible.

I bought a Gorilla Perfume stick that is like a push pop that you can rub on your skin. I love the smell, but I have no idea which sent I bought. Mine is a bit sweet like honey or vanilla. My girlfriend is a huge fan of Karma, with a fabulous spicy sent.

My friend also bought this amazing charcoal face stuff. It is supposed to brighten the skin and it leaves it silky smooth! I don't see this on the American Lush website. It may just be a Japanese thing. The Japanese ladies are really big on the skin lighteners and I know that they use charcoal soaps for that.

Reasons I love Lush: They make products from fresh, organic fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics. They make them fresh by hand using little or no preservatives or packaging, using only vegetarian ingredients, and they do not test on animals.

I mega heart Tokyo

Tokyo is fabulous. I got the chance to stay in Tokyo again last week for our Fuji Adventure. We were in Tokyo for 5 days and we had a ton of fun. I got to stay at the wonderful New Sanno Hotel again. I absolutely love this place. We walked around our hotel area, shopping and eating as we went along.

We also got to spend some much needed down time at the hotel pool and hot tub and booked ourselves spa treatments. I treated myself to a massage and facial. The facials there are fantastic in case you ever get the chance!!


We went out exploring. We rode the subway system like pros and oogled the Harajuku girls in the Harajuku shopping and entertainment district. We went shopping at rare commodities such as Forever21, Gap and H&M.

I fell in love with the Roppongi area. Loved it. We did more exploring, shopping, had amazing views of the Tokyo Tower, and drank margaritas at the Hard Rock Cafe.



We got really lucky and there happened to be a Blue Man Group show the night we were in Roppongi. We got "poncho seat" tickets right up front, so we had to cover up with plastic in case some of the Blue Man paint should fly on us. It was a weird, but really fun show!

I just love cities!

Tokyo - continued

So, I already told you about our first day in Tokyo, but I've added pictures!

Now I'll tell you about the rest of our Tokyo trip:

I didn't want to go to Tokyo and miss doing two very touristy things: going to the Tokyo Tower and the Imperial Palace.

First we went to the Tokyo Tower, a 333m high tower that opened in 1958 and is the world's tallest self-supporting steel tower. (The Eiffel Tower in Paris is 320 m high.) The Tokyo Tower weighs about 4,000 tons, which is lighter than the Eiffel Tower weighing 7,000 tons, due to advances in steel manufacturing and construction technology. You can choose if you want to just go to the Main Observatory (150 m) or if you want to go all the way up. We went all the way up and the view was incredible, concrete sprawl as far as the eye can see.

From the top of the Tower we saw and interesting building, so on the way to the subway we made a little detour to investigate. It turned out to be a Buddhist Temple:

Next we went to the the Imperial Palace area in the center of Tokyo. I found out you can't actually go in the Palace because it is where the Emperor and Empress actually live. If you want to visit the area around the palace itself, you have to make reservations on the Internet. But, the palace is surrounded Kokyo Gaien (Imperial Palace Outer Garden), Kokyo Higashi Gyoen (Imperial Palace East Garden) and Kita-no-maru-koen Park and they are free!

This in front of the Niju-bashi Bridge that stretches over the moat in the outer gardens:



In the Imperial Palace East Garden there is a stone wall that has been there since the time when the Imperial Palace was known as Edo Castle, a place where samurai warriors lived from the 17th to 19th centuries.


This area in Tokyo boasts having the largest number of people coming to view the cherry blossoms during the beginning of April. We were a little early, but we caught the beginning of Cherry Blossom season.

We packed a lot into the few days we had and it was an incredible trip. We only got to see a tiny part of gigantic Tokyo, so I can't wait to go back!