In My Mailbox, Part 2

Best Mail Week Ever!!!
On Saturday morning, guess what got dropped off at my apartment 5 days after I ordered it from fabric.com in the U.S.?

My first "toy". Each tax return year, we pick one "toy" after paying down debts. Somehow, so far, all of our "toys" have been video game consoles. Huh? I finally put my foot down and purchased this sewing machine after polling all of my friends and making sure its voltage wouldn't blow our Asian fuses. This is the sewing machine my SIL Amber has, and we do our shopping research in this family, right?
It is super computerized and has a ton of stitches, but to be honest, I really just wanted it because it can do twin-needle sewing, to look like this:

Twin needles are so crazy! I am excited!
I also got this cute hedgehog fabric, which Coco immediately said was hers:

And this fun sofa sorbet fabric, because I plan on making couch cushions with...couch fabric!


I am so so happy right now! Hubby is less than thrilled, because apparently sewing=spousal neglect. He works until 10 or 11 most nights, though, so after bedtime will be my sewing time. Maybe.

In My Mailbox...

This was a good mail week for me! Mail makes me so so happy, because it is very rare that I can understand anything that shows up in my mailbox. Usually it is flyers and bills in Japanese. So, here is what I got in the mailbox this week--


A lovely order of soy wax tarts from TenDigitCreations. Oh, I'm so excited for these! Japan has very weird trash laws. You can only take your burnable trash out on Mondays and Thursdays at 8 a.m. Your nonburnable trash goes out twice a month on Wednesday mornings, and your recyclables have to be taken to the grocery store. With all this, it seems like we always have some random bags of trash waiting to be taken out. Don't worry--we keep them behind closed doors in our drying room! Still, our house still smells funky sometimes. These little wax babies are making my apartment smell less like trash and more like Butt Naked and Vampire Venom (uh, yeah, those are the scents I ordered--what, they smell so good!). I don't have an electric warmer, so I just break the wax up and put it in my little ceramic diffuser, which works great.


A Dictionary of Japanese Food, by Richard Hosking. I don't know what I did without this dictionary. Oh, wait, yes I do--I bought potato starch thinking it was powdered sugar! This dictionary has lists of pretty much everything you'll find in a Japanese grocery store, along with the kanji, so you can read what you are buying. Wonderful!


The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. This book has been on my to-read list for a long time, and Amazon Japan had it much cheaper than Amazon US. Since I already read the only novel I brought with me (oops), I needed something to read, and I love this book already! It was recommended to me by a few people, and it is a big, fat 700-page fantasy novel that got amazing reviews. So, this one should last me a while. If you don't think you are a fantasy novel reader, come on...you've probably read Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Twilight. You are!


So, I am super happy this week! Cash also got some wonderful birthday cards in the mail, so thank you to those who sent them!

Oh--and it's strawberry season in Japan right now, which means you can get lots of yummy strawberry treats. This week, I treated myself to a Japanese snack sandwich--crustless white bread filled with strawberries, mochi, and whip cream. Yummy!

Monkey Majik!

One awesome thing about Japan is that all of the pop music has random English phrases. In fact, a lot of the songs have English titles like "Take it Easy" or "Baby I Love You"--and then the songs are all in Japanese except for a few key lines. Fox and I get such a kick out of this, because we're pretty sure most of the songs have nothing to do with the randomly inserted English phrase.

Well, we recently discovered a band that uses a lot more than just a few English phrases--Monkey Majik!! The singers are Canadian (one of them was teaching English here and became a popstar!), and the musicians are Japanese. So, the songs are a really good blend of both languages. We are obsessed with this song, but it doesn't have a good video. So, here is our second favorite:



Do you love it? If so, here is the English translation of the whole song. Embrace the pop-i-ness!