In my last post I showed all the beauty items I got from Japan. Now let me tell you about how stupid I have been in buying and using some of them

You see, I never learnt Japanese, so although I know how to say a few very simple Japanese phrases, I basically can’t read, write or speak Japanese. However, the Japanese language does use some Chinese characters, and I am Chinese, so what I do is try to guess the meaning of the words on Japanese products by reading the Chinese words and using a little common sense. I’ve even managed to cook pretty decent dishes following some Japanese instructions in this way. However, this method is not fool-proof, as you will see here.

First, the Kose Seikisho Pure Brightener. What I wanted to buy initially was the Mask White. But I’ve never seen the actual product before, only pictures of it. Not that it would have helped anyway. I happily bought what I thought was the Mask White at a Japanese drugstore, brought it all the way back to Singapore, and tried to use it one night. I squeezed it out and applied it thickly on my face (ps: both products are black in colour), and wondered why the texture was so weird and why it didn’t dry. I suspected something was wrong so I quickly went online to look for Seikisho products, and then realised… what I had was the Pure Brightener instead! Urrrgggghh! What happened was the 2 products have similar packaging, are about the same size, and I spotted the words “black” and ”skin-brightening” on what I bought and assumed it was the same thing. I felt like such an idiot that night…. :S The only good thing is, it makes quite a good scrub, so my purchase wasn’t completely wasted after all. But I still want the Mask White!

2nd silly incident: I wanted to use the Shiseido Rosarium Rose Aroma Oil this morning, so as usual I “tried” to read the Japanese instructions and spotted something that said “Usage amount: size of a 10 yen coin”. So I enthusiastically poured out a 10 yen coin amount and tried to use it all on my face. But it was really too much! No matter how much I tried to massage it onto my face I couldn’t finish using it. Then I read the instructions again and I noticed it said “Usage amount is for the face + arms + legs + butt + breasts”. Arrrggghhh I almost fainted when I saw that!

Moral of the story: I should go learn Japanese and maybe then I’ll be able to really read the labels and instructions properly and not feel like an idiot making mistakes like this