kawai

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Sanrio is touring around the US with their mobile pop-up shops. They were at San Francisco's Pier 39 on Sunday. It was pouring in the early afternoon and luckily when I went their around 5PM, it was dry. I also found a parking space that was only steps away from the mobile shop! If you're wondering why Hello Kitty is holding a gift box w/ Target's logo, this event was sponsored by them. After making my purchase, they will give you a coupon good for a free box of Hello Kitty bandages from Target plus a 20% off postcard at a local Sanrio store. The Smart cars have also teamed up w/ Sanrio to create this Hello Kitty car wrap. I really like this. It's all over the car but it's not too overwhelming. The pics below are the 3 items I bought yesterday (2 coin purses and 1 wallet). From what I learned from the Sanrio staff, some many of the products are only available at the mobile pop-up store so they're pretty rare! The hamburger c...

I just made my purchase online! Even though it's not Oct 22nd right now (it's now 11:35PM ) I decided type in the promo code ( FF2010 ) to see if they will accept it. And they did! Now I just have to wait for my items to arrive!! Happy shopping everyone! If you're interested in Rock and Republic's cosmetics, here's a 50% off discount code good at http://shop.rockandrepublic.com/  Rockcosmetics   I received an invite from a friend where I can receive a $25 Rock and Republic credit if I purchased at least $75 worth of products. So I bought 3 eye shadows that totaled $84 ($28each). After entering the 50% off code, it was $42 and became $17 after the $25 credit. The $0.99 shipping and tax brought my grand total to only $20.38 for 3 eye shadows! So I got 3 eye shadows for less than the price of one! I immediately invited my friends to let them experience this wonderful deal!

Set to be released this coming January. I'm interested in the Hello Kitty one because Sanrio had a multi-tiered set w/ all the Sanrio characters on each level but it was around $300. I'm assuming these sets will be much more affordable.

Above is the code for Sak's Fifth Ave. Sephora's  20% off code is FF2010   Sephora's discount runs from 10/22/10 through 11/3/10. Have fun shopping!

Not green tea but I still wanted to try this. I wanted to get some more of the green tea Oreo bars but they were sold out. The only flavor available was the Mango and it only came in the family packs. For just this and the Kit Kats, it was already $12 ( can buy a huge bag of Halloween candies from Costco) but these are limited time only flavors so I wanted to try them before they're gone. I thought these Kit Kats would be light purple or contain flecks of dried blueberry bits but it just look like an ordinary Kit Kat bar. Once you open a pack, the strong blueberry aroma just pops out but tastes like milk chocolate with a hint of sweet blueberry flavor. I don't dislike this but I don't think I would have an urge to buy another bag.   The mango flavor was surprisingly strong and reminds be of Chinese style mango puddings. This tastes better than the Oreo Milk Tea but not as good as the Oreo Matcha Green Tea.

Chestnuts still in its capule! The needles were extremely sharp and a pair of tongs were used to handle them. I accidentally poked my finger and caused micro bleeding. The first time I learned about these spiky capules was from Re-ment's Cooking with Mama series where they had a miniature version of this. Then I later watched the chimpanzee from the Japanese show, Pankun & James, collecting them during one of his missions. Now I get to see the real ones!

I went to Urban Outfitters again. I bought 6 this time. First one I opened was the China Hello Kitty and yea!!!! After that, I was bummed out more and more. 2nd box was Kenya kitty, 3rd was England, which I already have. The biggest bummer was opening 3 China kitties in a row!! I still need 4 more to complete my collection.

The 3rd series of the Hello Kitty vinyl figures are now available but  it's a real disappointment compared to previous series. They're less edgy. Each of these figures are suppose to represent a certain country by the outfit they're wearing but Sanrio has already done this before with their plush dolls. But since I've already collected series 1 and series 2, I got them just for the sake of having a complete collection. The bad thing about buying from Urban Outfitters is that they throw in several cases of the figurines into one bin. So you will end up with many duplicates. I bought 12 boxes (that's already $96!) today and I ended up with 2 extra Germany, 2 extra England and  3 extra Kenya. I still need 5 more figures to complete the set but I don't know how much I need to spend in order to get the rest! The package indicates that there's a secret Hello Kitty but it's just Hello Kitty in Kimono. The ones I still need are Canadian, French, Chinese, Japanes...

I wanted to try my luck to get another Toy Story birthday cake but I ended up with this set. It's actually not bad at all because the 2 snack wraps and the balloons are nicely detailed.

Unlike Glico, Kabaya frequently acquires licensing for popular characters. I've seen Hello Kitty & Thomas the Train. Seems like Rilakkuma is currently the most popular from San-x. Re-ment already has plans for releasing 2 Rilakkuma sets but not the other San-x characters. Even the pouch is covered with Rilakkuma! The sticks are butter flavored and they taste pretty much the same as Glico's Pretz. Japanese Oreo candy bars! I thought I give these a try because the Japanese Kit Kats were so good. The one on the top is matcha green tea and the bottom one is milk tea. I thought the center was chocolate w/ Oreo bits but whole thing seemed to be a cookie covered in a layer of chocolate. Even my brother thought so too so his first reaction was, "it's so chalky!" Matcha Green Tea. I love this one and I'm definitely going to stock up on these next time! Milk Tea. I didn't really like this one because the milk tea seemed to be the Earl Grey type of milk tea so ...

Here's a preview of the 5 Re-ment sets that will be coming out in November or December. The Disney ice cream cones are keychains that are also pens. The cats are keychains. Re-ment is doing another zipper pouch series with the Toy Story characters (can't wait till they do a Hello Kitty or Rilakkuma zipper pouch series)! The Hello Kitty pieces are all magnets (I like the sewing machine)! For the Rilakkuma set, those are regular miniature food items. I 'm definitely going to get the Hello Kitty magnets and 3-4 complete sets of the Rilakkuma bakery!

I would definitely go for the cakes but of course these are made of plastic so it would only be good for dolls! These pieces are of better quality because they were the older sets released at least 3 years ago. I need to organize my collection again so I'm going through sets that are still in their original boxes and pouches. These are usually the duplicates or triplicates I've been holding on to for a while and I've been very indecisive to whether I should keep or sell them. The miniatures from the 2 pictures are part of the triplicates I've decided to keep. If time permits, I'm going to stop by Ichiban Kan and Beverly's to purchase more plastic containers to store my minis so I can get rid of the original packaging. They do take up a lot of space!

Went to 99 Ranch today and they have the 3rd release of the Vitasoy 70th Anniversary soy milk cartons. Also, all Vitasoy drinks are on sale. Two 6-packs for just $5!