January Favourites

The first month of 2021 has come and go. It's been a bit of a wild ride honestly and hopefully Feburary will be better for everyone. Apologies for not posting a December Favourites last month and this was because I was overworked with the Boxing Day sales and didn't have time to post one. So for January I made sure to post one to make up for it! I need to spend some time going back through the blog catching up on comments and updating pages as I finally have heaps of free time to blog more. Enough talk, let's get into the monthly favourites for January 2021!

Gaming

This month I've only really been playing Nintendo Switch on and off. Been taking a short break from New Horizons as I was really annoyed at never getting any new DIY recipes. Like my villagers keep giving me log stakes and going on about starting the new international craze. Now if you took a stroll around my island, you'd notice that I'm quite the fan of log stakes. So my villagers mustn't pay much attention when they walk around to notice that I already had this DIY :( Hopefully the developers fix this soon or at least add some new exciting content into the game. We are getting Pave but I've never been a fan of this character and always avoided Festivale in New Leaf. Here is my character staring off into the distance wondering when her villagers will give her the stupid signpost DIY.

In the meantime, I've been playing a fair bit of SELFY COLLECTION which I posted a review of this month! At first I was kinda frustrated with the game as I wasn't earning many coins but I've been grinding through the storyline and I'm up to almost a million coins! Whilst you can't be as creative with the outfits as Style Boutique, once you open more shops there are some beautiful pieces to work with. I'll probably post a play journal of the game soon as I've been putting in a lot of hours into it. How stunning is the outfit shown below? I just loved it too much and didn't want to give her a new one!

Music

I feel like I've listened to a billion songs this month and have plenty of new favourites. New CD's wise I got given some 90's and 2000's singles by a fellow CD collector and I was so excited to listen to some b-sides from old groups I used to listen to back in the day. They were CD singles from artists like S Club 7, Liberty X and my personal favourite boy group of all time Five!!!! Not sure if I've ever mentioned it before, but I love Five and listen to their greatest hits all the time. Slowly trying to find all their old singles and albums as I never had them growing up. Anyway here are some of favourite songs from this month!

Animal Crossing New Horizons Play Journal - Island Developments & Bizarre Conversations

So I got an SD Card reader for my new computer and I can finally transfer photos from my Nintendo Switch onto the computer! It was just so tricky for me to get to an Officeworks recently but I had some time free recently to get into store to purchase one. A few other shops sold readers which were all USB-C connectors which is great for laptops just not computers which are USB-A. Enough blabber about technology, I've realised it's almost been a full year since New Horizons came out and I'm far behind with my play journals! I'm still on photos from April! Look forward to seeing a lot of play journals cause I need to get through the backlog. 

Starting off, here is a cute photo of Alice in a dress I designed which turned out nice for once. I've never designed anything in the Animal Crossing games clothing wise so it was great to actually make something that resembled a dress. The koala villagers are one of my favourite animals in the series and Alice is a super cutie!

Look at who I found on a mystery island! The one and only Marshal! I was so excited to find him as he was the most exciting villager I had seen on the mystery islands. You know how it is, you just get boring or villagers you've already had. So I asked Marshal to move to my island and he's been there ever since. He has asked to leave a number of times, but I think he's super cute and has a nice personality so I always ask for him to stay.

Some lovely landscaping shots now which these areas have all changed. The first was just in front of Resident Services when I was trying to figure out what to do with the area. Alice is hanging around the area once more, she seemed to like that log stool. I mean, I'm a big fan of the log stools also. I just put them everywhere when the space looks empty and I want my villagers to sit there. Guess how many of them actually sit on them. None. Gosh I wish they'd increase the villager actions and make them sit on the benches you put everywhere instead of just on the ground. Backwards because all my villagers love doing that.

SELFY COLLECTION - The Dream Fashion Stylist Game Review

The Nintendo Switch is finally home to a fashion styling game and no it's not Style Boutique. The game is titled SELFY COLLECTION - The Dream Fashion Stylist and is based on the popular avatar program 'Selfy' from GCREST. The game has been out since September last year and is the localisation of the Japanese game SELFY COLLECTION 夢のスタイリスト. I've been playing the game a bit over recent days so I thought I'd write up a quick review of what I thought about the game.

SELFY COLLECTON - The Dream Fashion Stylist has you taking on the role of a stylist travelling to different regions creating outfits for players. There are over 5,000 items to collect and these include clothing, make-up, hair, costumes and backgrounds. You can use these items to fulfil coordinates requests for customers and to decorate your own in-game avatar.

The game graphics are super cute and colourful. That was the main thing that caught my attention when I was scrolling through the eShop. I just knew I had to get it once I saw the screenshots! Finally a fashion game on the Switch! When you start up the menu, you can select a new game or continue with your current one. The game is pretty basic from the start, you enter a name and it goes straight into the story line. Your avatar is a newbie stylist working at 2-way, a fashion shop in the city and it's the typical storyline that you are the relative of a previous owner (your mother co-owned the shop). So of course your character has a lot of expectations on their skills already. The first request will come from your co-worker Nana who talks you through a coordinate request. Key words for the look are mentioned in the request and don't worry, these show up on the outfit screen too.

CLC High Heels - Mini Album Review (Type A CD Only)

Last year I posted reviews of CLC's second Japanese mini album チャミスマ Chamisma and after nearly a year, it's time for the follow up review of their first Japanese mini album High Heels. I love the group's Japanese releases and have all five of them. Yep there's only five and I wish there was more. Like the group had no more Japanese promotions after チャミスマ Chamisma and I guess the change in concept was maybe linked to that. But it is Cube after all, so who knows. Let's take a look at Type A of High Heels!

High Heels is CLC's first Japanese mini album and it was released in April 2016 through Tower Records Japan. The mini album comes in two editions: Type A CD Only and Type B CD+DVD. I got both editions through the Tower Records online store when they were on sale once. The Type A editions includes the following contents:

• CD - 5 track mini album
• Lyrics booklet
• Jewel Case
• OBI

The concept for Type A of High Heels is a cute and innocent look. Reminds of me of classic early CLC looks and concepts. The front cover has a group photo of the members looking stunning and the back cover has a simple design. Not as colourful and fun as the チャミスマ Chamisma singles but it matches the feel of the mini album perfectly. チャミスマ Chamisma is more lively where as this one is more casual. The back cover contains the track listing, the logo and some production credits information.

Another beautifully designed CD from CLC just like their other Japanese releases. I love these pastel toned designs on CD releases as I'm really into pastel aesthetics nowadays. One thing I don't like about this mini album design is that the photo from the front cover is re-used as the photo underneath the CD case. Like why? It's just lazy and I would've preferred a blank or coloured background instead of a repeat. OBI strip is perfect as usual!

Onto the lyrics booklet now and CLC honestly has some of the best lyrics booklet's for J-Pop releases. The booklets always have lovely photos and it's just not boring text on every page. Each member gets an individual photo and there's a large group photo at the beginning of the booklet. Lyrics for each song are included along with more production credit information.

Now for a review of the songs! High Heels is basically a compilation of Japanese versions of the group's Korean title tracks and one English cover. The mini album is a nice debut for the group in Japan as it has songs fans are familiar with and a lot of Korean groups tend to do this for their debut Japanese releases. My favourite track on this release is 'I Should Be So Lucky' which is an English cover of a famous 80's pop song from Kylie Minogue. Kylie is huge here in Australia and I know that this particular song is quite popular in Japan. E-girls often sung it at their concerts and a number of Kylie's songs were covered by Japanese artists in the 80's and 90's. I wish the mini album had a Japanese version of 'Yaya (Say Bye To Solo)' as that is one of my favourite CLC songs and my favourite track on their 3rd Mini Album which the original Korean version of High Heels comes from. Type A of High Heels contains the following track list:

1. ファーストラブ First Love [Japanese Version]
2. PEPE [Japanese Version]
3. クングメ Curious [Japanese Version]
4. High Heels [Japanese Version]
5. I Should Be So Lucky

Both editions of High Heels do not include photocards and they were introduced for チャミスマ Chamisma. Maybe there was exclusive photocards sold in store or at events, I'm not entirely sure as I've never seen any. Here are both editions of High Heels together and Type B has my favourite concept out of the two. High Heels currently isn't available for purchase via the Tower Records online store however you can still purchase in-store. I was so happy to get hold of these and all the editions of チャミスマ Chamisma as I'm quite a fan of the Japanese releases from the group. Sometimes Tower Record exclusive releases can be a pain to get, but luckily there was a sale on right at the moment when I was making an order through Zenmarket. Hope you enjoyed this review of High Heels and I'll be back with a review of Type B soon!

High Heels Type A & Type B

Zenmarket Haul - AKB48, Apink, T-ARA, TWICE & S.O.A.P

Finally have some spare time after the busy retail Christmas season AND the post-Christmas sale season. I'm am so happy that everything has finally quietened down and it's not crazy hectic anymore. So it's time to post my recent haul from Zenmarket! I got these items back in December and I did a big order as I wanted to save on shipping. Luckily the 2 - 4 day shipping was only 300JPY more than the 3 month shipping! Zenmarket is currently not offering the usual DHL cheaper option that I normally use so it was tricky to calculate postage costs in my head. But when it came to the selection when the package was created, the DHL Express was the most suitable option so I went with that. Packaging was great and weighed just under 2kg. Anyway enough about boring logistics, let's take a look at the items!

I brought a bunch of releases that had been high priority on my wishlist for a while now and some were ones that are harder to come across. The main artist of this haul is AKB48 which I got 9 CD's of! I'm absoutely mad trying to start an AKB48 collection :P There's just so many to collect! The rest of the CD's are a mixture of K-Pop artists and one special Western release.

First up is the gem of my AKB48 collection so far! One of my favourite AKB48 A-sides is ハート・エレキ Heart Ereki and I searched all over Yahoo Auctions for a complete set of the single. Sure that was an easy task however so many listings didn't include the OBI :( I eventually found this set for 500JPY that had all the OBI's included! Yay! I'm in love with the concept of this single and all the versions look great together. I quite like the AKB48 version system as you get different songs on each version which is good value in my opinion. It's always annoying needing a certain version to complete a set and the content is the same as other versions. My favourite B-side is on Type B of this single which is 君だけにChu!Chu!Chu! by the Tentoumu Chu! sub-unit. This song is so adorable and I love all the songs by this unit. I wish they had actual singles or albums.

ハート・エレキ Heart Ereki Type A, Type K, Type B, Type 4 & Theatre Edition

Next up is a bunch of AKB48 albums and best albums. The ones I brought are  神曲たち Kamikyokutachi Theatre Edition, ここにいたこと Koko ni Ita Koto Theatre Edition, SET LIST〜グレイテストソングス〜完全盤〜 and 次の足跡 Tsugi no Ashiato Type B 2CD Regular Edition. I'm not sure which one is my favorite so far as I love them all! It took some searching for 次の足跡 Tsugi no Ashiato as I specifically wanted Type B and not many sellers were selling it with the OBI. Eventually found a random listing with nothing listed in the description so I took a chance and brought it! Item turned out great and it even came with a photo of a member (I'm not too sure who it is as I only really know certain early generation members).