Zenmarket Haul - AKB48, Morning Musume, Momoiro Clover Z, MOMOLAND & m.o.v.e

After writing that title, I realised it was almost artists that start with the letter M! So I got another CD haul from Zenmarket last month and got some great new additions to my J-Pop collection. Last year I did get a large number of albums from Zenmarket but never ended up posting them on here. Maybe I'll do my CD collection posts later on this year and add them to that. 

This order I focused mainly on AKB48 releases as there was a number of singles I was interested in collecting. Then there was also some harder to find albums that I have been searching for that I managed to find selling on Yahoo Auctions which is the platform I use to buy all my CD's from in Japan. Here are all the items I received in this order from Zenmarket! 

Starting off with the large collection of AKB48 singles I brought from this one seller. They were selling a set of 20 singles for 400JPY. Absolutely insane and all of them were brand new and unopened. So I couldn't say no to this deal as it contained quite a few singles I had been wanting. Sustainable was the main one I have been looking for as I really enjoy this song and it feels like a true AKB48 song to me. There was one song on Negaigoto no mochigusare that I like from hearing the JKT48 version of it. I had originally brought this CD last year but sadly it got cancelled by Zenmarket due to issues with the seller. So it was nice to finally receive one. All of the below singles are the theater or shop editions which are usually the ones I collect.

After that massive lot of singles, I brought even more AKB48 singles! I had been wanting to get Ponytail to shushu for a while now as I love the Majijo Teppen Blues song. It's so dramatic and amazing to listen to and the part with Takahashi Minami is my favourite. Also brought a set that had some random singles in it mainly because I was looking for the Heavy Rotation CD which is the one in the case. A big thank you to Zemarket for helping with this specific item as they helped out with this a request I had regarding this item. Super helpful and great communication with everything! These were also all new sealed singles which are super easy to find with AKB48 as fans often bulk buy the CD's and rarely open them.

Zenmarket Haul - Found New Treasures!

I went into 2024 with the intention of not purchasing any Japanese releases this year due to shipping costs. This was until I was having a bad week and thought bugger it, I'm doing it! Luckily the Japanese Yen was a good rate so I got some bargains and didn't lose out too much on conversion between the currencies. For this order, I focused on getting releases that were exclusive to Japan and not available on any streaming services. The service I used was Zenmarket of course and it was a simple process. Shipping wasn't too bad with the final cost of shipping it here being around $45 and I received it within two weeks. Everything was packed perfectly with lots of bubble wrap and no damages! In total, I ordered 25 CDs which is a good number and it was about $240 for all of this including all the fees and shipping within Japan.

Starting off with the main reason I placed this order which was these albums from m.o.v.e! I have been addicted to these albums for a while now and unfortunately they are hard to listen to here in Australia. The group isn't on Spotify nor does Australian iTunes have these specific releases. It has the singles but not the albums! So I was always listening to them on YouTube until I got sick of that and needed the physical CDs. These were various levels of difficult to get with their first album being the easiest and their third having barely any listings. So excited to have these in my collection and they sound amazing! In clockwise order from the left side, the albums I got from m.o.v.e where electrock, worlds of the mind and Operation Overload 7.

This was kind of an impulse buy as I love one particular song on this dream world album which is King & Queen. dream music is always difficult to come across and I thought I'd get the physical one as I enjoy the songs on this one. It was a pain to find as the title is so vague and I had to go through so many listings of other things to find this. Thank heavens the cover is red otherwise I wouldn't see the listings. Originally I wanted just the standard CD version but couldn't find one as all the listings were for the limited one. I wasn't too sure if the box was big or not however it is a decent size and you get lots of fun inclusions. There was even a calendar that I didn't know about!

March Favourites

Happy to see the end of March as this month has been quite eventful. Lately I've been having a stressful time and looks like it will stick around for a while longer. So I haven't really been doing much besides playing Nintendo Switch or reading. Hopefully April will be better and things will improved. I will miss the warm weather though as we starting to head into Autumn. It is meant to be stormy the next few days which will be good as we haven't had rain for a long time.

Gaming

I have been playing my Nintendo Switch more than usual and I actually got back into Fashion Dreamer! During my last play journal that I posted that other day, I commented on how I was a bit bored with the game but once I got back into it, I found it quite fun. There is currently an event running and I have been enjoying taking part in that. I want to try out making some cute outfits to take photos in and level up the NPCs.

Another game that I've been super into is Pretty Princess Party which I totally forgot I owned! It got caught up in all the games I have on my Switch and I randomly decided to play it again the other week. I forgot how adorable it is and I love a good collectible game. Once I focus on it, I should be able to finish it in no time and trying to master that silly horse riding game. Never have been good at that type of mini game and I was surprised I aced the dancing one as usually I'm awful at rhythm games. Might post a play journal on Pretty Princess Party one day if I have enough photos. Maybe once I get closer to completing the storyline or collections.

Music

Finally brought all the items I could on Yahoo Auctions and I am currently waiting for the parcel. So excited to get all my Japanese CDs as they are unavailable here in Australia. Our iTunes didn't have a lot of the albums I was looking for and luckily I could find copies on Yahoo Auctions. The parcel will take a while to get to my address but I don't mind waiting.

AKB48 ここにいたこと Koko ni Ita Koto - Album Review (Theatre Edition)

Big day today with the first AKB48 review on Marzipan Wonderland! Now I don't have a massive AKB48 collection however I do have a number of items to showcase. First off we shall look at the theatre edition of their album ここにいたこと Koko ni Ita Koto.

ここにいたこと Koko ni Ita Koto is the first original studio album from the Japanese idol group AKB48. It was released on June 8th 2011 and came in three editions: Limited Edition CD+DVD, Regular Edition CD+DVD and Theatre Edition CD Only. I picked up the theatre edition as it was a good price but I'd love to get the limited edition one as you get a 100-page photobook which I bet looks gorgeous. The theatre edition is super cute with the Kami 7 featured on the front and back covers. My copy of ここにいたこと Koko ni Ita Koto came with the following contents:

• CD - 16 track album
• Jewel case
• OBI
• Lyrics booklet
• 14 alternative covers featuring the Senbatsu members

April Favourites

Yet again another month has flown by super quick and means it's time for another monthly favourites! I actually did a stack of things this month most of which was decluttering belongings. One day I was just like 'I feel like I own too much stuff' and I started clearing out things. A large bag of clothes for younger relatives, a few bags for the op-shop of various items and sold a bunch of gaming stuff off to friends. The biggest clean out item was books and DVD's. Over the years, I've gained quite a collection of DVD's but I stepped back to take a look at them all and thought 'jeez I never watch like 60% of this stuff'. So I spent ages watching a whole bunch of DVD's to determine whether they spark joy or not and ended up getting rid of like 50 DVD's! The books were much easier as I decided to get a Kindle so I could read more on the go and store them digitally rather than physically. I had all the Janet Evanovich novels which took up heaps of space so I donated them all to various op-shops and just kept my favourite series of her's which is the Wicked Series. Seriously Janet? When are we going to get the next book in the series?!?! I've been waiting years! Also got rid of a lot of other random books that I was never going to use and will hold off buying anymore physical ones. Here's a photo of my lovely Kindle that I'm obsessed with! I got the Paperwhite and it's so lightweight and easy to use. The Kindle store has stacks of books about theme parks which I'm super excited to read. My current book is Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park and I've been enjoying it!

Also got a bunch of new stickers! I actually got quite a few this month and I'll probably post a small haul next month. Here's a quick photo of all the ones I got at Daiso last week! The first Daiso I went to didn't have many stickers at all or anything exciting really. But then I went to the one closer to my house and they had so many!!! Not sure why the original store isn't carrying much stock, but I'm going there again tomorrow so I'll check out to see if the selection has improved.

Gaming

I've decided to stick with digital games from now on (Style Boutique will be the exception if it ever comes out on Switch) and cancelled my pre-order for Pokemon Snap. I didn't want to buy another physical game until I played through current ones. Just been playing some SELFY COLLECTION which I'm so close to completing the entire game. It's taking ages to grind money to buy all the items and it's kinda boring. I only really do it when I don't want to think about stuff and just press buttons. One game that did just get released that I never thought I'd see is Castaway Paradise on the Switch!! I played this game a lot on Steam ages ago and couldn't believe it when I saw it appear on the eShop. Had some eShop credit from a gift so I picked it up and it's still charming. It's pretty much the same game and it's not something you'd play for ages. I just play a bit here and there. Much easier to make money at the start as I know the tricks. I hope it does well on the Switch as the game is fun and it's nice to support indie developers.

Music

Have to admit that I did clear out some CD"s this month. None of my Korean or Japanese pop music ones of course! My CD storage was over flowing and unfortunately I couldn't keep somethings. I brought a stack of CD's back in March at an op-shop but my collection was becoming a bit too much to store so back to the op-shop went a portion of them. Mainly things that I wasn't attached to and wasn't hardcore collecting. Plus I always burn the CD's into iTunes so I can still listen to the songs!! The cases were pretty destroyed as well which is common with op-shop CD's.

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!

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).

August Favourites

It has been forever since I last did a monthly favourites and I'm trying to get back into blogging after a hectic few months. I'm going to try to post at least two times a month not including favourites or update posts), hopefully three being ambitious. So to get back into the groove of things, a month favourites post is an easily starting point.

Gaming

Been playing Animal Crossing New Horizons on and off. I tend to play more on my days off when I have more time and only quickly some days just to search for DIYs. The snow finally melted thank heavens cause I was way over it. I've also decided to redo my town as I wasn't the biggest fan of it's layout in recent days. My town wasn't entirely finished luckily so it wasn't hard to tear everything down. Still thinking about what to do so it's a mess currently of large open spaces and billions of flower. Here's a cute picture of Eugene hanging out at the town plaza!

Beauty

Gotten back into nail polish in recent months and found some new favourites. Years ago when I used to do my nails all the time, my go to was Complete Salon Manicure from Sally Hansen but it seems they don't really do that line anymore. I only use Sally Hansen nail products so I decided to try out the Insta-Dri as it seems to be the closest replacement to Complete Salon. I picked up these Jelly Belly collection ones on sale and I actually really like the formula! It does dry very quickly and has good coverage on the nails with only two coats. The two glitter polishes are nice when you figured out how to apply it properly, I've got the Tutti Fruitti glitter polish (second from the left) on currently and I was able to set it in the glitter flakes quite well with the Insta-Dri top coat. Looks great so far after two days but the test will be once I go back to work this week and see if it holds up against manual work all day.

Music

Geez I feel I could write an entire post on my music favourites this month because there are so many! I haven't been buying many CD's this year as shipping is difficult currently with COVID restrictions. I did however get BLACKPINK's How You Like That single from JB Hi-Fi so that was exciting to get a new K-Pop release. Don't have any photos of that one on hand but I can tell you that it is a large single and the tallest one in my collection so it was tricky to fit into my shelf.

Here's a quick rundown of some of favourite songs this month which has mainly been J-Pop ones. Been on a bit of a old school J-Pop binge lately and discovered some great new songs to listen to. I really shouldn't do this to myself because it only adds more CD's to my wishlist that I'd love to own one day haha.

June Favourites & New Styling Star Challenge Announcement!

The end of June is finally upon us which means only two more months of winter left! Trying to look at this freezing weather a positive way haha. The last part of this month kinda dragged but it's unbelievable that we are halfway through the year basically. Anyway big announcement first off for Marzipan Wonderland. I will be doing a brand new Styling Star Challenge starting tomorrow called the 100 Outfit Challenge. For the next 100 days, I will be posting a themed outfit from Styling Star so be sure to check that out if you enjoyed my previous Style Boutique challenges. Now onto the favourites!

Gaming

After a few months of not playing much or any 3DS, I got back into playing New Style Boutique 3: Styling Star lately. I guess I was just burnt out on it and needed some inspiration for new ideas. Checked out a few of my favourites Style Boutique tumblrs and felt like playing the game again. Be sure to check out razzberriezz who just did my Retrobeat Challenge and Luna Blue Boutique who is currently doing my 30 Day Challenge. Both have such amazing blogs so be sure to visit if you love Style Boutique!

The other day I posted a play journal for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp which has been one of my top games lately. A new event started yesterday which is vacation themed and whilst I'm not as interested in it as the Feather Fantastia one, it's still been fun seeing the adorable hermit crabs. I wasn't a huge fan of these creatures in New Leaf because they would always spawn at the Island instead of expensive beetles. But just look at these cuties! I love their little animations they do when they appear in your garden for this event.

Music

Big month music wise because I've been reorganising my entire collection on my computer which has been a massive task. The short story is that most of my collection (the older stuff really) wasn't in MP3 format and I had trouble syncing it to my car, phone and fitbit. So I went through and deleted everything I would never listen to again, Then everything that was left that I didn't own on physical CD I re-added in which took forever. Plus recopying in my entire K-Pop and J-Pop collection took forever as well. Not entirely finished yet, but at least I can listen to *Nsync in my car now haha.

Song wise, I've really been into AKB48 lately and found a few new gems from them. Previously I'd only heard a few songs from them which were ギンガムチェック Gingham Check, Teacher Teacher and ハイテンション High Tension. But I took sometime to listen to more of their discography and boy was I impressed! There were so many amazing tracks I had been missing out on! Well I guess that's one more group to collect singles and albums for. At least AKB48 ones aren't too hard to get your hands on because they sell a lot of units. Here are some songs I've been loving from the group this month!

July Favourites

This month was incredibly busy for me so I don't recall what happened this month. Not too many favourites this month as not much happened for me. 

Gaming
Didn't have much time for gaming this month besides some short sessions of New Style Boutique 3: Styling Star. Mainly just doing challenges and creating outfits, nothing exciting. I am planning on finally doing the 30 Day Cosplay Challenge in the game soon, so it should be up in September once I figure out 30 characters to cosplay.

Music
This month I received my copy of MOMOLAND's new album, so I've been listening to that one. Baam is still my favourite track, then Very Very and the instrumental for Baam. You can check out my review of the album here!

Been listening to some Kyary Pamyu Pamyu recently. I used to be really into her a few years ago, but kinda forgot about her when the tracks were starting to sound similar. I've got back into her music recently thanks to Spotify. I hope she releases another full album soon as I love picking those up for my collection. Blogger didn't want to link to song I wanted which was Crazy Party Night ～ぱんぷきんの逆襲～ so here is her recent release Kimino Mikata きみのみかた instead.

AKB48 has been a group I've never really got into and only knew Gingham Check from them. But this month, thanks to Produce48 appearing all the time on the Youtube App for me, I've been getting into their discography. I'd love to collect some of the physical CD's one day, but they're so crazy with all the different types! I thought KARA ones were rough, but AKB48 sometimes has 5 to 7 versions. So that's a thing for future collecting.