FMFA 2014 Experience: Arrival & Day 1

Last March 12, we left for Kuala Lumpur to catch the Future Music Festival Asia 2014. It's a 3-day music festival (March 13-15) with the world's best DJs and artists such as Pharrell Williams, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Armin Van Buuren, Martin Garrix, etc. We bought tickets for the festival via Galactix Asia and it cost us around RM 348 or around Php 5,000.00.

We arrived around midnight and we headed to our hostel, which was just near Bukit Jalil Stadium, the festival venue. Finding our hostel was a disaster. But to cut the long story short, we tried searching for a new place, but after 3 hrs, we still ended on that same hostel. We're just thankful that we've met a very helpful taxi driver. And I would just like to commend him for being a responsible head of his family. He works as an employee at Petronas in the day and as a cab driver at night.

We took some rest and went out before lunch to explore KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Center). We just went around Suria, the mall under the Petronas Towers. We had photos taken at the Petronas Towers, had lunch, and headed back to the hotel to prepare for the first day of FMFA.

it just so happened that we had the same outfits :)

it was hazy so the towers were fading in the smog

a mandatory tourist shot :))

at the front side of the mall (lovin' my monopod haha)

After fixing up, we're off to the event grounds. We arrived quite late so we didn't catch the Adventure Club. It was R3HAB who was spinning when we came. The highlight of the night was when R3HAB guested Martin Garrix for a quick spin. He gave us a preview of what we should be excited about on day 3. The night was closed by Deadmau5. It was indeed a crazy FMFA Day 1. We've met a lot of fellow Filipinos from all over the world, and new foreign friends from different parts of the world.

OOTD

Girls' OOTD

Philippines REPRESENT!

met a Filipino guy who's based in HK\

woohooo! R3HAB on the decks!

a perfect shot indeed :)

so we found more Filipinos in the moshpit

couples representin'

another artsy effect

my friends just designed their own festival shirts and shades

Deadmau5

FMFA Day 1 DONE!

xoxo,

city girl

Why I Love Shopping in Japan

Japan is my most favorite country to shop at. Yeah, Hong Kong only comes next, and Bangkok comes third. While many think that shopping in Japan is ridiculously expensive, I'm here to be a myth buster. Shopping in Japan could be more expensive than shopping in other Asian countries. However, the technique here is to know where and when to shop in Japan just so you could get a good deal, most especially for signature items.

All of my previous trips in Japan were during Spring; and as far as I can remember, I was able to catch a lot of bargain items due to the changing of the season from Winter to Spring. I remembered shopping a lot from H&M and in Harajuku. Well Shibuya 109 is their fashion center but everything there is just expensive no matter what season it is. The brands there are all local designer brands and those shops really set the trend.

The best time to shop in Japan is from mid-December to mid-January. This is when you see the SALE sign everywhere! One weekend in December, we went to Yatsugatame Resort Outlet (outlet shops of local and foreign brands) and we've gone crazy shopping at Coach Factory where we shopped for an hour. We got 2 wallets, 3 bags, 2 bangles for just 100,000 yen or less (around Php 40,000). The Japanese people are too shopaholic that there are a lot of outlet malls/parks all over Japan. The biggest of which is the Mitsui Outlet Park Shiga Ryuo in Kyoto with 237 stores. The one we went to was the nearest to our place (less than an hour drive), located at 4000 Kobuchizawa-machi (town) Hokuto-shi (city), Yamanashi-ken (province).

The craziest shopping day is the New Year's Day! Yeah, what a way to spend so much on the first day of the year haha! Every New Year, most of the shops, most especially the local brands are preparing HAPPY BAGS. Each happy bag is filled with an entire set of outfit or multiple random items from a store and it's available on promo price. The usual price of a "happy bag" is 10,000 yen or Php 4,300. But its content is actual worth more than that. However, the catch here is that, you don't know what exact items are inside -- the style, design, color. What you only know is the size and the actual worth of all the items inside. Well, I've seen some that displayed the actual content of the bag but they're more expensive than the surprise ones. I watched in the news that there's this shop wherein a lot of people have already lined up at dawn to get HAPPY BAGS worth 10,000 yen each but are filled with items worth 100,000 yen or Php 43,000. Can you just imagine how awesome of a bargain that is?!? (I actually took photos of the happy bags but I lost them 'cause I failed to sync them to my laptop before deleting them)

So on New Year's Day, I went shopping in Tokyo with my cousin and aunts and I spent 2 hours in H&M because there were a lot of ridiculously discounted items and a lot of customers as well. I bought 10 items for only 5,000 yen of Php 2,200. That's a mix of dresses, shorts, tops, and skirts. I could've bought more but I limited my spending and my family has been waiting for me for so long at a resto across H&M. haha!

H&M Harajuku

at the roof deck of Tokyu Plaza (Harajuku)

will never get tired of shopping for bargain finds

In Japan, we live in the province but we're just a minute or two away from boutiques and department stores. I think we go shopping like at least twice a week. On weekends we go to the malls in nearby cities such as the Aeon Mall in Kofu (Yamanashi), Don Quijote (Matsumoto, Nagano), etc. Imagine how much this trip damaged my pocket. But still, I was thankful 'cause I got a lot of free shopping from my aunt, uncle, and cousin.

my cousin is my forever shopping buddy

Hardware Zone Magazine Philippines Holiday Gift Guide 2013/2014

This is a super late post. Sorry, it almost slipped my mind. But hey, better late than never.

Last October, I got invited by Hardware Zone Magazine (HWM) Philippines to be a part of the style team of their Holiday Gift Guide 2013/2014. It's like a catalogue of products (not only gadgets but even apparel) that serves as a source of gift ideas. It was actually out in the market from December 2013 to February 2014.

Our models were Angelia Ong, Ladylyn Riva, and Farah Ramos. And I co-styled the wardrobe and the hair of the models together with Shiela Del Rosario. The shoot coordinator was Darlene Sasan of HWM, and hey, they're all my friends. It seemed like a "barkada" project for us.

The themes were: couch potato, adventurous/explorer, and party animal.

Here are the final output:

Lady on the cover wearing Solari Clothing's "Lush" dress

Here's our team:

And we're about to work on the HWM Summer Gift Guide 2014. Stay tuned!:)

xoxo,

city girl

Japanese New Year: Oshogatsu Festival 2014

The New Year celebration in Japan is called the Oshogatsu Festival. It's more solemn and traditional as compared to that of the Philippines, and other Western countries.

For the New Year's eve, we travelled to Tokyo to celebrate it with my Japanese uncle and his mother. But before heading to their house in Tokyo, we stopped by Hachioji to shop for food at Costco. There were so many shoppers getting ready for the NYE.

When we arrived at my uncle's house, we cleaned it up a bit then we headed to the onsen (public bath). There were actually a lot of customers that night. After that, we picked up my cousin and aunt's bestfriend at the bus station and we went to Don Quijote to go shopping. Imagine, it's around 10pm and we're still shopping on NYE.

We all went back to the house and got ready for the NYE dinner (Media Noche in Pinoy culture). We had a very simple NYE dinner. The staple food for NYE dinner in Japan is the soba. After dinner, we headed to the Jindaiji Temple. It's a tradition in Japan to visit shrines/temples on NYE. There were a lot of people lining up to throw coins and pray or make a wish. Surprisingly, I saw a lot of groups of young people at the temple. While some were at the New Year countdown at Shibuya crossing and in some clubs/bars, there were still a long of youngsters who still celebrate the NYE traditionally. 

year of the horse

wine

food!

small temple

main temple (while we were in line)

that's a small fountain

while waiting for our turn

where people get their omikuji

The next day, we had brunch. We shared the "osechi", a set of traditional Japanese New Year food in a special box called, "jubako". Each food symbolizes something, such as health, wealth, and good fortune. After brunch, we hit Harajuku area for shopping. New Year's Day shopping is probably the craziest shopping day of the year in Japan. I'll be making a different post about it, as this post focuses on Japanese New Year.

Anyway, the next day, my aunt's friend gave me an "otoshidama" or New Year money, along with an "omikuji", a piece of paper that talks about my fortune. Unfortunately, I got bad fortune, or "kyo". I must get at least a "kichi" or blessing. To reverse the bad fortune, we went to Suwataisha Temple and tied the piece of paper containing bad fortune at the temple. Then I picked a new number. When I got the piece of paper, it read "kichi", or blessing. Finally! Well, you can check Wikipedia on their meanings.

really bad fortune (1st omikuji)

Suwataisha Temple

me and my aunt

Onbashira

big Japanese drum

people waiting for their turns to pray

must let go of the bad luck by my first omikuji

getting a number (it's written on a stick)

then there's a corresponding omikuji for the number that I got

it's their version of holy water

the main entrance

tried it for the first time

traditional Japanese house

So that's the traditional Japanese New Year. Far from how I usually celebrate it in the Philippines, but this experience has been really worth it.


xoxo,

city girl