Week 2: Fake Eyelashes

Alright, so fresh off of learning how to knit, I decided to switch it up and do something fundamentally girly (and Japanese) that I'd never done before. Ever since moving here, I've marvelled at just how many young Japanese women wear fake eyelashes. Seriously, that can't be comfortable. How do they put them on every day? Do they stick easily? Can you get them off? Does it seriously improve your appearance? All these questions were running in my head, and I needed to find some answers.

The decision to do this came about on a whim, when I was driving the 5 hours back from snowmobiling in Monbetsu with Andromeda. We had stopped at a Seicomart to grab some snacks and drinks for the ride home, when I noticed the fake eyelashes just hanging out in the beauty section of the conbini. I impulsively grabbed them and purchased them, running out to the car before Andromeda could notice what I'd done.

When I got home, I decided to wait until the next week to start the challenge, so wait I did. I was impatient, though, and decided to further prepare by buying more different kinds so I could see what kind of difference they made. I rounded up all my materials and ended up with a table that looked something like this:

 

The tube on the bottom is eyelash glue, which is also apparently liquid liner. I started by washing my face, and appliying this to one eye, and one eye only. I wanted to see the difference it made. Because of this, here is my before photo. (Not gonna lie, didn't take an actual before photo but here's one I just took of me wearing no makeup)

Right, so I added the eyelash glue/liquid liner to one eye very carefully, then I took one set of fake lashes and tried to press them on. They didn't stay. Big surprise there.

I pulled them off, and tried sticking them on again. It worked, but they were hardly close to my actual lashline and the liner was super messy. I decided to try to fix it by putting more real liquid liner over it, and then covering it with eyeshadow, and I guess it sort of worked. Here's one photo of me with one eye covered in fake lashes and the other eye still bare.

It's kind of a creepy picture, and I apologise, but you try to take a decent picture of yourself with only one eye done up and have it not look ridiculously strange.

ANYWAY, Then I painstakingly did the other eye as well, and ended up with something that looked sort of like this:

As I mentioned, this was my trial run, so I didn't actually go out of the house like this. I did, however, walk around the Yuki Matsuri that weekend all eyelashed up, and here's a few photos of my beautiful eyes then:

What do you think? Do I look better with fake eyelashes or without? Have you ever tried wearing them? Would you try wearing them? I'd love to hear your thoughts. :)

By the way, if you actually want to read about the snow festival, visit my Japan blog at http://jeriandjapan.blogspot.com/