Fasio gives us some eye candy with Moon Brilliance Eyes Spring release

Silly title, I know. But I really needed to get back into blogging and I've been listening and watching a lot of the Japanese boy group, Arashi. So since I wanted to blog about beauty and still mention Arashi I thought I'd have a look at another Japanese cosmetic brand, Fasio.

Okay, maybe you don't know why Fasio was an obvious choice, but it's because MatsuJun is featured in many of their commercials and he's a member of Arashi.

Fasio is a Japanese drugstore brand of makeup that's part of the Kose empire and you can see one of their latest commercials (CM) below.







I have actually wanted to share these eye shadow palettes from Fasio's Spring 2012 release called Moon Brilliance Eyes (ムーンブリリアンス アイズ) since I first saw them online.

Okay, so if you've been following my blog, you'll know I'm a sucker for moons, so I can't ignore this collection. I love the crescent moon shape. Otherwise the 5 palettes are pretty standard releases with two pinks (PK-1 and PK-4), one beige (BE-2), one brown (BR-5), and one blue (BL-3).

Close ups from Fasio's website:

I really want to check these out, but I'm still trying to decide which palette I need the most. Honestly I have a lot of eye shadows at the moment, and none of these really stand out as something I don't have or can't create already with my existing supplies. I was most tempted by the beige BE-2, but it didn't look as exciting on the model as I thought it would. So I'm leaning towards PK-1, which generally speaking is the easiest shade of *any* Japanese release - usually the first pink shade (or only pink shade) works reasonably well for me. I love the blue one BL-3, but often find the blue shades looks better on the Asian models with dark eyes than on my lighter skin and eyes, so am often disappointed. Any ideas? Which one do you think I should try?

Don't get me wrong, these look amazing and I can't wait to try them, a part of me just wishes there was a purple or a green, or something more eye catching in this collection.
 

Another thing I really like about the Fasio website is the video tutorials! Yes, they are in Japanese, but you can see them all here on youtube and honestly I think you could follow along without understanding anything that's being said.

Here are some direct links to the tutorials involving some of the Moon Brilliance Eyes palettes:

PK-1 tutorial
BE-2 tutorial
BL-3 tutorial
PK-4 tutorial
BR-5 tutorial

 These retail for 1400 yen in Japan and are available from Ichibankao. 

Back to Arashi...

I have been catching up on my Japanese TV watching this week and weekend so far, and one of the shows I've watched was Ongaku no Chikara 2012 (音楽の力２０１２), it was an almost 3-hour special from NTV that aired just before the one-year anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake. The message was that music has the power to heal and many of the artists gathered were involved in relief efforts. If you want to know more about Ongaku no Chikara, please check out this blog (it's in English).

It was such a captivating and moving show, I wanted to share some of it with you. Thankfully someone has kindly put up Arashi's free mini concert that they gave to suffers of the disaster in order to boast their spirits. Unfortunately this clip doesn't contain the full story, so I do recommend you watch this if you're interested.