March Favourites

It has been a billion years on the blog since I posted a monthly favourites. Always a fun post on the blog and I've had a few interests in recent months that have taken up a large chunk of my time. March has been a strange month as the weather is still quite warm here which I'm all for! I do not want the cold weather to arrive and I'm loving the shorts and t-shirt weather. 

Gaming

Most nights I spend time playing colouring in games on my switch as I'm obsessed. My switch friends see a notification for the games I play and they are always like 'what on earth are you playing?'. I just find them so relaxing and I use a stylus which makes it super easy to colour in each section. COLOREE and Pixel Cross Stitch Color by Number are my current projects. COLOREE is a colour by number style game and Pixel Cross Stitch is the same but you can use the stylus to colour it in rather than just selecting the square. That's what makes using the stylus so perfect for the game! Nice and lowkey activity to do at the end of a busy day.

Books

This month I decided to spend less time on my phone as my screen time was getting out of hand. I was wasting so much time doing pointless things and decided I had enough! So I've set out on a mission to read every day and so far my streak is 9 days! Recently picked up 13 books at the library as they had a book sale for 50 cents each or $2 for a bag/as much as you could carry. I ended up getting two lots in different visits as I visit my library weekly. So far I've read one book which I really liked, two that weren't my vibe and currently 33% through a new romance one. 

July Favourites

Apologies for the late posting of the monthly favourites for July and you can blame my computer for that one. I think a part in the tower is worn out/broken as the computer is struggling to do anything. Finally got it to load this morning without crashing so I shall try to post this before it dies again. July was a pretty busy month mainly with work. The weather has improved slightly as in its not freezing cold every day. There was one day with some crazy fog and it was a task to drive to work in it. Let's get onto the monthly favourites! Starting off with this cute Gomamon Pop Vinyl I got last weekend! I placed an order as soon as I saw it announced. Not the biggest Pop fan but I do like to pick them up when the figurine looks cute or is some IP that I love.

Gaming

Finally finished my One Year Challenge for New Style Boutique 3: Styling Star. It was a long journey and a lot of screenshots to post. Might take a short break from Style Boutique outfits as I'm worn out from it. I have been playing lots of other games in the meantime. Last month I talked about Pretty Princess Party which I have been playing a fair bit. Not as much as the sequel Pretty Princess Magical Garden Island! I brought it on sale and been playing it every day since. It's basically an Animal Crossing clone where you are on an island and do random activities like fishing, catching bugs and crafting stuff. Absolutely love how easy it is to move buildings and bridges in the game. Animal Crossing needs to get on that level. 

Besides a stack of digital games, I also picked up a few new physical games for the switch. I got the remake of We Love Katamari and Little Friends: Puppy Island. Only played the Katamari one so far and it is amazing. I had played the original one on the PS2 but this port is way better. Always fun to roll around and pick up random stuff. Haven't tried out Little Friends yet however it did come with some cute joy-con grips. They look great on my Nintendo Switch and are quite nice to play with.

ぴこぷり Pikopuri Summer 2015 Magazine - GIRLS MODE 3

It's time to take a look at another Japanese magazine featuring information on the Girls Mode series. This is the ぴこぷり Pikopuri Summer 2015 Magazine released in June 2015 in Japan and features 124 dedicated to various video games aimed at young girls. I mainly brought this issue for the content on Girls Mode 3, Disney Magical Castle: My Happy Life and Animal Crossing. This particular issue came with the usual Animal Crossing QR Code appendix book, stickers and some special origami of some villagers. Today we'll just be looking at the Girls Mode 3 content of the magazine which covers a few pages. First off is the cover of the magazine which is bright and colourful as usual.

ぴこぷり Pikopuri Summer 2015

 The title page of the Girls Mode 3 section features the character that the magazine uses for the game and a cute photo of a character in game wearing a dress from Marzipan Sky (known as La Chou Chou in Japan). The next page features some more outfits which is the standard content you will see in the Pikopuri magazines with Girls Mode stuff. There are some cute Girls Mode themed comic manga strips included on some of the pages. They follow the adventures of the character shown on the title page and her doing things around Bougainville and interacting with characters like Sophie.

Some more outfit photos are shown on the next few pages. The Pikopuri magazines along with the Girls Mode content in the キャラぱふぇゲーム Chara Parfait magazines and special Girls Mode book are great resources for getting outfit ideas. I know I've gotten some inspiration from outfits I've seen in the magazines which were combinations I never thought of or items I've kinda ignored.

GIRLS MODE 3 キラキラ☆コーデ Book - Part 2

Last year, I made a post about the GIRLS MODE 3 キラキラ☆コーデ Book and shared some of the gorgeous photos of the books content. I recently got around to taking photos of all the other pages that I didn't share in the previous post so let's take a look! You can check out my first post about the GIRLS MODE 3 キラキラ☆コーデ Book here! First off, here is the content page of the book detailing the different sections.

Next is the remainder of the brand pages that I didn't share last time. Don't the items from Cherry Berry look adorable. I love that name way more than April Bonbon. I'm a big fan of the Brooke Bridge page as well as it shows off some of the best items from the brand.

GIRLS MODE 3 キラキラ☆コーデ Book - Part 1

Girls Mode 3 had the most amazing books released in Japan for the game and I happened to own a few in my collection. I've share two other magazines in the past which were the Girls Mode 3 キャラぱふぇ ゲーム スペシャル Chara Parfait Magazine & the Girls Mode 4 キャラぱふぇゲーム Special 2018 WINTER Magazine. This time we will be looking at the GIRLS MODE 3 キラキラ☆コーデ Book which was a special book released in 2015 and is completely devoted to GIRLS MODE 3 content.

Front cover of the GIRLS MODE 3 キラキラ☆コーデ Book

Back cover of the GIRLS MODE 3 キラキラ☆コーデ Book

The main feature of the book is the images of all the different brands in the game. The book advertises the range of clothing items available from each brand and outfit ideas you can create. Here is the contents page of the brands and personally I love the Japanese names of the brands. Cherry Berry is just adorable and flute f sounds much more beautiful than Chorale.

Here are some of the brand pages in the book starting with Marzipan Sky. I love the way the book is designed as it matches the catalogue style you see in Japanese magazines such as KERA or release pictures for brands like Angelic Pretty. The items even list the price of the clothing item in game to match the look of a real life advertisement.

Girls Mode 4 キャラぱふぇゲーム Special 2018 WINTER Magazine

Last year I posted about a Girls Mode 3 magazine I brought from Japan. Well I recently received a similar magazine from Amazon Japan so I thought I would share some photos from it. The magazine is a special winter edition of the Chara Parfait magazine which is a magazine targeted at young girls. The title of the magazine is キャラぱふぇゲームSpecial 2018 WINTER and features a section devoted to ガールズモード 4 (Girls Mode 4). Here is the cover of the magazine which features a variety of topics and games. Most of the magazine is about Sumikko Gurashi and even came with a adorable Sumikko Gurashi playing cards set.

The magazine features a cute calendar based off ガールズモード 4 that you can cut out of the magazine. It features 12 months and images of the main idol girls in their promotional material outfits. The back of the calendar has some characters dressed up in new items from the game.

Amazon Japan Haul - MOMOLAND, Girls' Generation & Books

This is the first order I've received from Amazon Japan for a fair while and it probably will be the last for a long time. This is because the government is bringing in new GST restrictions for online stores and Amazon has decided to cut Australia from using their overseas site. Not entirely sure what will happen on July 1st when the changes come in effect, but as soon as I heard the news last month I placed an order straight away on Amazon Japan for some items I was after. So here are the items I received in my recent order! 

I got a Chara Parfait キャラぱふぇゲーム magazine which is the 2018 Winter Special released in December last year. The main reason I got this magazine was for the ガールズモード 4 Girls Mode 4 content, but you also got a cute Sumikko Gurashi playing cards set. The cards come in a nice steel case which I haven't set up yet, they're still in the cardboard box. I'll blog about the ガールズモード 4 pages on here soon as there are some great pictures of the game in the magazine. I have an older issue of the Chara Parfait magazine which was devoted to ガールズモード  3 Girls Mode 3 and I've written a detail blog post about that here!

Sumikko Gurashi playing cards.

ガールズモード 4 pictures of brand representatives.

Picked up this adorable needle felting book because I wanted to learn how to make animals. Also mainly because it has the cutest Shiba Inu's in it and I need to know how to make like a million of them.

The next item was kind of a random purchase as I originally wasn't planning on getting it. Since Amazon is changing soon, I thought I'd look through for any cheap items I could add to my order. When I was going through artists that I'm looking to collect albums of, this Girls' Generation single came up for only 300JPY. It was on sale from about 2000JPY and no clue why it was so cheap. So I thought why not for only 300JPY plus 300JPY shipment fee per item.

Girls Mode 3 Magazine キャラぱふぇ ゲーム スペシャル

Thought I'd share some photos of one of my Girls Mode 3 magazines I brought from Japan. This issue is the special game edition of Chara Parfait which is a game magazine in Japan targeted at girls. I brought the magazine from Amazon Japan and the title of the magazine is キャラぱふぇ ゲーム スペシャル released in June 2015. The first section of the magazine is devoted to Girls Mode 3 whilst the rest is about other games.

Magazine Cover

The beginning of the magazine contains some adorable Girls Mode themed postcards. The postcards are themed around the brands and styles of the game. There is also a tear-out calendar covering months in 2015 and 2016. It features characters dressed in the various styles and photos from the game. The back of the calendar has a study schedule to write in and more character images. I haven't used any of the postcards yet as they are just too perfect to use and I just can't bring myself to tear them out.

Adorable postcards

The magazine covers the features of the game such as hair styling, fashion shows, designing clothes and the different fashion styles in the game. There is a wealth of information to read and gorgeous pictures of characters, items and aspects of the game. The first section details the locations and activities in the game and further information about each one. You can notice in the photos below that in Girls Mode 3, some of the main characters look different. The skin tone of characters such as Noor, Laurie, Tarquin and Arabella was changed to a darker tone in the Europe/Australia and North America versions of the game (Style Boutique & Style Savvy).

Information on where to visit & what to do in the game.

Information on the beautician.

Information on the hair salon.