Tower of Empties: Empties, Discards, and Pretties

Last week, I mentioned in What's In My Stash: Forgotten Finds & Organization Overhaul that one of the last tasks I had on my to-do list was to tackle a giant box of empties.  I wasn't kidding; this thing is so massive it deserved its own post!  Behold the dragon, unslain:

Just imagine how big this box is, if my phone looks that tiny.  Click for huge size.

I admit I was a bit daunted, but I was determined get my office to 100% organized, so this box needed to be dealt with.  It contained a mash-up of empties tucked back in their boxes, packaging for products I'm currently using, empties orphaned from their boxes and boxes orphaned from their empties, products banished to the discard pile, and gorgeous product packaging worth keeping regardless of how I felt about the products inside.

There was also a staggering number of sheet mask boxes, which I haven't included in the photos because there would be no room for anything else.  That reminds me, I still need to inventory my sheet masks ... oh dear.  Still not at 100%  Another day, then. *shakes fist at the sky*

So without further ado, here's the Tower of Empties (at least what would fit) precariously perched in my office:

It looks like so much less when it's all tidily arranged, no?  Ah wait, that's right, this is all that would fit without falling off.  Click for huge size.

Mmm, so many empties.  I've taken close-ups of each tier, and will be calling out some notable products from each.  They'll be numbered for ease of  "what the heck is that one 4 places from the left?!" identification.

In this post:

• The "would not repeat" tier
• The "gone but not forgotten" tier
• The "so pretty I'm hoarding it" tier

Of course, now that I've managed to assemble this house of cards boxes and bottles in order to take photos of it, I need to pack it all away because our struggle has reduced my office to rubble.

Onward to the goods!

4 Reasons Why I Don't [Always] Agree with "Skincare is YMMV"

One of the least controversial, most-repeated refrains of the international K-Beauty and Asian cosmetic community is "Your Mileage May Vary", meaning "not everything works the same on everyone.  Perfectly logical, and it's often how we agree to disagree and stay polite even as someone else is dragging your favourite skincare product until its label is worn clean off.

"I hated the smell, it broke me out, the packaging design was hard to use, and I don't agree that it was hydrating at all!" [img credit giphy]

I was inspired to write this post because I was complaining to someone that the Lador hair care products I had just tested had a horrible, permeating scent that bothered me and my husband all night, and to my surprise, they said that it was almost odorless for them.  When I pressed for more details, they good-naturedly shrugged off my questions with "I guess it's just YMMV of skincare then" and I actually found myself (gasp!) disagreeing on that too (for reasons I'll explain below.)  Heresy! Blasphemy!  Certainly a shocking departure from my usual mantra of YMMV in all skincare.

YMMV is the great equalizer; almost everyone can agree that a lot of the conflicting results people get with the same product can just be chalked up to their unique skin's reactions, their personal tastes, even how they might be using it.

But I don't always agree, and here's four reasons why.

Hada Labo Gokujyun Foaming Cleanser vs Medicean ER Nature Cleanser Review: Low pH & Fun-Free

It's taken me a long time to review the Hada Labo Gokujyun Super Hyaluronic Acid Foaming Wash, and not for interesting reasons.  It's hard to write reviews of unremarkable products-- sometimes products are really good or really bad, but most of the time, they're just bland.  Such is the case with the two self-foaming cleansers that I'm reviewing today as my newest "Dirge of Duds" post.

This outdoor image brought to you by SPF 50+ PA+++ sunscreen.

Ironically, my last Dirge of Duds post (linked above) also featured a Hada Labo product, but unlike the Hada Labo Gokujyun Hyaluronic Lotion which I actively disliked, I actually emptied the entire bottle of the cleanser, which is a pretty amazing feat considering that I've got a lot of cleansers in my rotation.  Part of it was just determination to empty a cleanser so I could purchase something fun that excited me more, and part of it was that it was an easy sell for my husband's nascent skincare routine, being both utilitarian and unoffensive.

Still, both of these cleansers were so boring that they added to, instead of mitigated, my ennui towards cleansing and that resulted in me skipping my routine more often than I'd like to admit.  I purchased these with the intention to try a very famous cleanser (the Hada Labo is a favourite of adoredee and many others) and to compare it against a similar Korean product (the Medicean) which was a relatively rare animal-- an openly low-pH Korean cleanser.

In this post:

• Product details
• Ingredients
• pH results
• How they compare
• Final thoughts

Before we jump in, I'd like to take a moment and remind people that skincare doesn't work the same way for everyone; many people don't care about Skincaretainment and just want their products to do the thing they're supposed to do.  I'm just jaded and can't get it up for bland products these days-- I need my products to motivate me to drag my exhausted backside into the bathroom and start my routine.

Both of the cleansers work just fine, and they're good options for beginner cleansers, which is why the Hada Labo cleanser appeared in my Beginner Friendly: Simple K-Beauty Starter Kits for 4 Skin Types series, which details 4 really simple beginner routines with only 5 products for a variety of skin types.  I just need excitement in my bathroom, and not the kind that evokes dead grandmothers and ignores safewords.

Beginner Friendly: Simple K-Beauty Starter Kit #4 - Normal, Hyperpigmented, & Aging Kit

The last post of the Beginner Friendly: Simple K-Beauty Starter Kits for 4 Skin Types series is here!

This week's kit is in honour of my mother-in-law (and aunt-in-law) who I've been slowly luring into K-Beauty over the years-- she had a nonexistent routine and a very unfussy approach to self-care, so it's been all about baby steps.  That is, until she realized the products I've been gifting her have been fading the sun/dark/age spots she's started to develop in the last few years, and now she's on board.  I'm now working on my aunt-in-law; soon she too will be serum-ing and sheet masking with abandon! *shakes determined fist at the sky*

Left: simple. Right: eeeeek!  Both are examples of the daily routines I post on Instagram.

As a reminder, the products and routines in this series are actual routines and care packages that I've put together for actual real people (not usually all at once) as gifts or recommendations if they've expressed interest in my hobby.  I am not a medical professional and I am not 'recommending' things as a treatment for others; this is me letting you all behind the scenes into what I personally gave as gifts, etc, for personal friends and family.

In this series:

All starter kits will feature 5 items or less, what they're for, and how to use them.  All lovingly selected with thought and care, because when I make kits for my friends and family, it's a box o' love.  Obviously not everything works for everyone, patch testing is necessary, etc etc.  (Two weeks between new products!)  These are just my personal picks.

• Starter Kit # 1: My college-age friend with oily, acne-prone skin (link here)
• Starter Kit # 2: My college-age friend with dry, stressed skin (link here)
• Starter Kit # 3: My mother's sensitive, dehydrated, aging skin kit (link here)
• Starter Kit # 4: My mother-in-law's normal, hyperpigmented, aging kit (you are here!)

• Bonus Kit if I haven't thrown myself off a cliff from creating all these visual (yes, visual) kits:  My personal kit if my house burned down and I had to start over with nothing but Amazon gift cards, which won't be simple, less than 5 items, or anything else straightforward.  No promises. Done! K-Beauty on Amazon: Rebuilding a 15+ Step Routine if My Stash Caught on Fire

Once these posts are live, I will link them above.  Done! As I mentioned in the original post, these items will be from Amazon for accessibility reasons as a counterpoint to the more internationally-focused From Beginner to Expert Mode: Where I Buy K-Beauty & Asian Cosmetics post.  K-Beauty should be accessible and affordable for everyone; it might have a steeper learning curve at first but it's not a pretentious, elitist thing and there's options for everyone no matter your taste or budget.

Accessibility is an ongoing theme in discussions with the podcasters of The Snailcast and my decision to create this series inspired by the amazing K-Beauty routine that Tracy of Fanserviced-b posted for normal skin types, which you can check out here: Easy Starter K-Beauty Skincare Routine for $100 on Amazon.

My mother-in-law has normal, non-reactive skin that does not require any products to stay balanced; she has been doing a simple soap-wash-in-the-shower for years and only started exploring skincare when I explained it could help fade the hyperpigmentation spots she was getting from a lifetime of not using sunscreen.

Beginner Friendly: Simple K-Beauty Starter Kit #2 - Dry & Stressed Skin Type

Here's the second installment of my Beginner Friendly: Simple K-Beauty Starter Kits for 4 Skin Types series, where I share the actual suggestions/gift selections/starter care packages I have selected for 4 real people as their beginner's intro to Korean beauty products.

Historically, I've avoided recommending specific products for my readers (and still do) as I'm not licensed to be giving skincare advice and I'm very adverse to veering into Dr. Internet territory, but I realized that even though I can't recommend products to people, I can share the products that I've assembled as starter packages for K-Beauty beginners in my life.  By that I mean my family and friends who continually get beauty products for their birthdays and holiday gifts as I attempt to get them hooked on the good stuff.  I'll get my mother into snails one of these days, mark my words!

This week I will be sharing Starter Kit #2, which was for a college-age friend with dry, stressed skin who needed something simple that would give her a huge boost in moisturization without interrupting her studying and would also soothe her skin.

Left: simple. Right: eeeeek!  Both are examples of the daily routines I post on Instagram.

I've been pleasantly surprised at how much people seemed to like the first kit (link here: Simple K-Beauty Starter Kit #1 - Oily & Acne-Prone Skin Type) but as fellow Snailcaster Fiddy of Fifty Shades of Snail pointed out, sometimes it's easy for skincare nerds like us to forget that not everyone is a skincare hobbyist.  (I actually wrote an entire post about having skincare as a hobby, in fact!)   I tend to shy away from simple, because the endless possibilities in customization is what excites me about K-Beauty, but it's a good reminder that not everyone feels that way!

Making K-Beauty more accessible is something The Snailcast discusses quite a bit (our podcast episodes frequently touch on this topic as a recurring theme) and this series was inspired by the excellent example routine that Tracy of Fanserviced-b posted: Easy Starter K-Beauty Skincare Routine for $100 on Amazon for normal skin types.

In this series:

All starter kits will feature 5 items or less, what they're for, and how to use them.  All lovingly selected with thought and care, because when I make kits for my friends and family, it's a box o' love.  Obviously not everything works for everyone, patch testing is necessary, etc etc.  These are just my personal picks.

• Starter Kit # 1: My college-age friend with oily, acne-prone skin (link here)
• Starter Kit # 2: My college-age friend with dry, stressed skin (you are here!)
• Starter Kit # 3: My mother's sensitive, dehydrated, aging skin kit (link here)
• Starter Kit # 4: My mother-in-law's normal, hyperpigmented, aging kit (link here)

• Bonus Kit if I haven't thrown myself off a cliff from creating all these visual (yes, visual) kits:  My personal kit if my house burned down and I had to start over with nothing but Amazon gift cards, which won't be simple, less than 5 items, or anything else straightforward.  No promises. Done! K-Beauty on Amazon: Rebuilding a 15+ Step Routine if My Stash Caught on Fire

Once these posts are live, I will link them here.  Done!  As I mentioned in the original post, these items will be from Amazon for accessibility reasons as a counterpoint to the more internationally-focused From Beginner to Expert Mode: Where I Buy K-Beauty & Asian Cosmetics post.

Time for soothing skincare!

Beginner Friendly: Simple K-Beauty Starter Kits for 4 Skin Types

I meant this to be one megapost, but as it grew longer and longer and the delay was getting longer and longer, I realized it was better for me to break this up into a small series of posts, and get this show on the road!  This post is meant to be a follow-up/expansion post on Fanserviced-b's fantastic post Easy Starter K-Beauty Skincare Routine for $100 on Amazon-- and in fact the podcasters at The Snailcast have been chatting lately about the struggle to simplify what is, at it's heart, capable of infinite complexity.  Actually, that's why we like it!

K-Beauty is like cooking; there's so many ingredients (products) and ways to use them to suit your taste.  Sometimes that can get a little frustrating for people like us who are trying to help, because answering "how do I cook" doesn't really have a simple answer, right?

Cooking can be simple, or it can be complex, and K-Beauty is the same.  It can be either, like these two examples:

Left: simple. Right: eeeeek!  Both are examples of the daily routines I post on Instagram.

The problem with answering "what should I buy?" and it's variants such as: "I bought this list of products, what do you think?" and "Here's my cart of items, are they good?" and "What do you recommend for acne/aging/hyperpigmentation?" is that we quite simply can't.  As in, legally can't.

On the other hand, learning does require a progression from "simple to complex."  How to make it simple?  Tracy's post outlined a simple, fun, and inexpensive routine for normal, non-sensitive, non-troubled skin, and kept things wonderfully simple and beginner-friendly.  So what's the next step, without getting too complex?   As we were discussing all this last weekend, I realized that I had made similar "K-Beauty Starter Kit" recommendations to friends and family members, including care packages with a simple starter routine.

Aha!  Lightbulb flash!  Could I share these starter kit boxes with people, since it's not specific advice?  Why not?

From Beginner to Expert Mode: Where I Buy K-Beauty & Asian Cosmetics

One of the most common requests I receive (blog comments, Instagram, Facebook, email, you name it) is where I buy my beauty products.  I do have several guides which I will link in this post, but it seems that a lot of people just want a straightforward list of shops that they can start with.  So, that's what we're going to do today!

Image from: A Haul Before the Storm: Eye candy, Details, First Impressions, & some Mini Reviews

I will be loosely categorizing the shops, but please keep in mind that anyone can buy from anywhere for any reason, these are just how I'd quantify the different shops that I have purchased from, or have plans to purchase from, or would happily recommend to someone looking for something they carry.

In this post:

• Domestic Retailers

Good for: Beginners, Lazy and/or efficient people, Instant gratification seekers, People concerned about counterfeits, Patrons of small business owners

• Domestic e-Markets

Good for: Small haulers, Pinpoint purchases, Deal-seekers with finite patience, People who are annoyed by shifting shipping costs.

• International Retailers

Good for: Deal-seekers, Moderate yolo-ists, People who don't know Korean, Large haulers, Comparison shoppers, Devotees of spreadsheets & min/maxing items vs shipping costs

• Buying Services & Korean Sites

Good for: Advanced users, Thrill-seekers, Hardcore yolo-ists, Spreadsheet nerds, Self-aware K-Beauty hipsters, People who know Korean, Masters of Google Translate,  Deal-seekers with infinite patience

All of the sites listed are places which I have either purchased, or would happily purchase from based off feedback from people I trust.

Lazy Morning Staple: Su:m37 Skin Saver Cleansing Water Review

If you follow me on Instagram, where I often post my daily routines, you may have noticed that the Su:m37 Skin Saver Essential Cleansing Water has been featured pretty heavily lately.  After I realized that I had only used my favourite foaming cleanser of 2015 just once in the last two weeks, because I had been reaching for this cleansing water every day, I figured it was high time I reviewed it!

Mmm, this packaging.  The opalescence of the bottle cap is so hard to capture!

This is the third cleansing water I've tried to date, and so far, I like it best of the three although I'm not passionately in love with it- hence why it did not make it onto the 2015 in Review: My Favourite K-Beauty Products of 2015 list.

That's not to say that it's merely the best of the available evils; I quite like this, and it's been my "dear saint snail I'm freezing my ass off and my bathroom is cold as hell and I don't want to wash my face because the chance of getting water on myself is too damn high" cleanser of choice.  It's also my "there had better be coffee when I sloth out of this bathroom like Jabba the Hut" cleanser, and my "I can't feel my fingers" cleanser, and also my "I've lost fine motor control functions because I'm wearing 8 layers to stay warm" cleanser.  It's the first real winter I've experienced after 8 years in the desert, and needless to say, I'm feelin' it.  Especially in the morning, when I look like one of those "before and after coffee" memes and I try to walk through walls and doors that have somehow leapt out to obstruct my path. Jerks.

So if you're like me and you 1. hate mornings in general, 2. hate cold mornings especially, and 3. can't manage to wash your face without splashing water all over yourself, cleansing waters are great.

In this post:

• Product details
• What is a micellar/cleansing water?
• Ingredients
• Packaging
• Demonstration
• Final thoughts & why I like it

I'm going to demonstrate this product's ability to remove makeup as some people use it as a first cleanser/makeup remover, but that's really not what I use it for.  I use it as a gentle, convenient, super-quick AM cleanse for mornings where I am super lazy and/or hate the world and everything in it because I haven't had coffee yet.

The weekend I broke up with 75% of my sheet masks

This weekend is going to be a light-hearted progress report and not an in-depth review, guide, or discussion, so if you're not particularly interested in how I attacked the contents of my sheet mask stash and culled the weak from the herd, check in next weekend when we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming!

I poured myself a coffee, hauled my sheet masks out of every nook and cranny of the house, & prepared to be savage.

I know, last weekend when I posted my massive two-part megapost (2015 in Review, Part I: My Favourite K-Beauty Products of 2015, & Part II: My Favourite K-Beauty Tips, Concepts, & Trends of 2015) I said that I was taking this weekend off due to the double-post.  I was exhausted from a hectic season at work, family events, and writing a megapost that required me giving up sleep 4 nights in a row to finish in time.  I was determined to give myself a break this weekend, and maybe I'd finally tackle the giant, sprawling, terrifying catastrophe that is my office.

I had no intention of blogging this weekend; every once of mental fortitude was already spoken for this arduous task ahead of me.  So how did I end up breaking up with the majority of my sheet masks, and then staying up late posting about it?!

In this post:

• What possessed me to do this in the first place
• What I'm excited to use
• What I'm excited to try
• What I'm keeping, but not using, & what I'll be using up
• What's being given the boot- gifted, given away, and destashed
• What my mask collection looks like in the aftermath

There may be a few expired masks in the 'destined for destash' pile, so I'll be sorting through when I decide what to do with them, but it's such a relief to have culled so much from my stash.  Life is too short to be wasted on masks I don't want to use!

Dirge of Duds: Reviews of Hada Labo Gokujyun Lotion & Mizon Rice Wine White Toner

Last week I posted the first in this series: Dirge of Duds: Reviews of Mizon Almighty Cold Cream, Acence Blemish Control Gel, & Good Night White Sleeping Mask, because I was determined to get through the backlog of products that I found myself unable to review out of sheer boredom.

Today I'll be knocking out a Hydrating Toner Edition, featuring one popular product and one I rarely see reviewed.  As I mentioned last week, these are more mini-reviews, where I'll provide product details, ingredients, and brief thoughts about my experience with the products.  There will be no action shots, because they're both perfectly as clear (but more vicious than) water.

left: Hada Labo Gukojyun Lotion, right: Mizon Rice Wine toner

Hydrating toners, if you are unfamiliar with them, are a very thin product that hydrates and preps the skin for later layers.  Sometimes they are also low pH to adjust the skin back down after using a high pH cleanser, but I already live a low pH lifestyle because I read one too many studies about it, and I have a routine heavy in actives and chemical exfoliants so I baby my skin.

A note on hydrating toners:

If you aren't sure where a hydrating toner would be placed in your lineup when jumbled in with your first essences and not-first-essences and serums and whatnot, you can check out Putting your products in order, including pH dependent acids for a detailed explanation, or if you want a simple visual overview, check out A Visual Guide to the Korean Skincare Routine from Tracy at fanserviced-b, which is much tidier than mine.  If you want to see the order + example products (including the Mizon Rice Wine toner), you can check out my Multi-Step Korean Skincare Routine post.

In this post:

• Hada Labo Gokujyun Hyaluronic Lotion Moist Review
• Mizon Rice Wine White Toner Review

Before we start, I'd just like to add a gentle reminder that not everything works the same for everyone's skin, and that climate, your water, and the season can have a dramatic impact on how your skin reacts to products.

Travel SOS: Taking a 10 Step Skincare Routine on the Road with Poor Planning

While having a Multi-Step Korean Skincare Routine is awesome for customization whether it's the Winter or Summer, it also means that travelling is a bit of a nightmare.  Last week I was out of state, and since we would be gone a full week, I mistakenly assumed that we would be checking a bag and thus figured I could pack the full-size bottles that make up my current routine.

The night before we flew out, I got ready to pack and was was advised by my bewildered spouse that we would not be checking a bag.  Cue panic!  How was I going to fit my routine in a carry-on?!

The dreaded 3-1-1 TSA guideline.  Image from here

If you aren't familiar with the American TSA rules for carry-ons, anything liquid has specific rules, namely:

3-1-1 for carry-ons. Liquids, gels, aerosols, creams and pastes must be 3.4 ounces (100ml) or less per container; must be in 1 quart-sized, clear, plastic, zip-top bag; 1 bag per passenger placed in screening bin. The bag limits the total liquid volume each traveler can bring.

A quart-sized ziploc bag is not a lot of space when even your "pared-down" Summer routine looks like this:

Image from my Updated Multi-Step Korean Skincare Routine Summer 2015: Sheet Masks Galore post

If I had planned ahead, I could have purchased all the airless pump bottles I would need to decant everything I wanted, and played tetris until I had the perfect combination.  Sadly, I had time for neither.

In this post:

• The 411 on my 3-1-1
• My 'dry goods' and makeup
• What I took with me and why
• What I regretted not bringing

So with no time to order bottles, what did I do?

Updated Multi-Step Korean Skincare Routine Summer 2015: Sheet Masks Galore

Today I'm finally posting the Summer version of my routine, as a follow-up to my in-depth discussion of the Korean multi-step skincare approach post which includes all my Winter/Spring 2015 products ... all 30 of them.

Even though scorching, sticky summer has arrived, the guidelines of thinking in steps, not products, how to add in or remove additional products, and their order of use have not changed, but as always my skincare has shifted to match the season.

Even though there are quite a few products here, this is a far cry from the 30+ in my Winter/Spring routine here.

However, just as I mentioned in the Winter/Spring routine, I use only a few products per day, and tailor my selections to how my skin is feeling ... but let's be blunt here.  I barely use anything these days, because it's TOO DAMN HOT.

As I mentioned in the post: Science Meets K-Beauty Wisdom: How Keeping Cool May Be Good for Your Skin, temperatures here are climbing rapidly and when it gets hot enough that I'm peeling off my office chair with the sound of duct tape being ripped off the roll, I don't want to do a full routine.

In this post:

• It's too hot for layers
• My AM & PM routines
• Cleansers
• Actives 
• Hydrators
• Top 3 Summer Sheet Masks
• Occlusives
• Treatments/Sunscreen

So, here's the updated version of what my Summer 2015 routine is looking like these days!

Japanese Goodies: first experience with Rakuten + a friend shops for me in Japan!

This week's post is also going to be about Hauls, but this time heavy on the photos and light on the philosophies!

Specifically, Japanese beauty product hauls; although I purchase and review a lot of Korean beauty products, I'm always interested in products of note from elsewhere in Asia.  It can be a little more tricky to find them, however, which is why I enlisted the aid of a friend travelling in Japan and then took my courage in hand to try shopping at a new-to-me Japanese shipping venue called Rakuten.

Is there anything quite like the thrill of getting an international box in the mail?

One of the two boxes of Japanese goodies I have received lately, to my grabby-hands delight

Korean beauty products are taking the world by storm, but there's one area of Asian beauty product fans' hearts that Japan has staked a (thus far) unshakeable claim to, and that's sunscreens.

Oh man, Japanese sunscreens.  For more on how Japanese sunscreens cured me of  a lifetime loathing of sunscreen, click here for my post on my sunscreen struggles and a comparison review of 3 physical-UV-filter-only sunscreens.

However, even though the sunscreen breakthrough allowed me to wear sunscreen without wanting to shred the skin off my face, I am still searching for that Sunscreen Of My Dreams: physical-only UV filters, gentle, non-drying, and with minimal white cast.  A tall order indeed!

In this post:

• Why RatzillaCosme is a sunscreen-hunter's best friend
• My search for a mythical sunscreen
• A friend's attempts to find it + what she got me instead
• I face down my fear of Rakuten & the sunscreen is mine!

Also, Korean beauty products are famous for their packaging, but the Damascus rose mist I purchased from Rakuten is no slouch in the eyecandy department!

Shiseido Perfect Whip Cleanser Review

This week's review is of the best cleanser sidekick for my Clarisonic, the Shiseido FT Sengansenka Perfect Whip Facial Wash.  This cleanser is unlike anything I had ever encountered in western skin care, and on its own it seems gimmicky and unremarkable, but when paired with my trusty Clarisonic, it's a match made in skincare heaven.  I've also included how to make Perfect Whip foam, using two different methods.

Shiseido is a very widely recognized Asian luxury brand, but this particular product is from their 'drug store' line of products, so they are affordable but still considered to be decent quality.  I wouldn't dare use conventional drug store skin care like Neutrogena, etc, on my face (cue skin rage) but I've heard good things about Shiseido's drug store products and certainly my skin likes the Perfect Whip just fine.

Details:

Full product name: Shiseido FT Sengansenka Perfect Whip Facial Wash

Purpose: A foaming cleanser with a unique foam formation that resembles a very thick, dense shaving cream more than your traditional foaming cleanser.  It creates a thick cushion of foam on the skin, and is supposedly to be very gentle on the skin.

Texture: Starts as a pearly ultra thick cream and looks like toothpaste out of the tube.  It's slick and stringy at first, but when water is added and agitated with fingers, brush, or foaming net, it whips into a giant cloud of dense, superfine foam which resists pressure.  Almost like a mousse texture.

Scent:  Medium.  It has a sort of chemical smell, like Clearasil, Neutrogena, etc, but with a pleasant fruity/floral scent on top. Doesn't linger after rinsing.

Packaging: A squeeze tube, so be careful as a little goes a long way.

Quantity: 5oz, which is a large amount considering how little you need.

Availability: I bought mine from Amazon, also available various places online.  If you happen to live in Japan, it will be easily available.

Price: With shipping, it came out to about $9 from the above seller.  Compare that to the $33 for the ElishaCoy All-In-One BB cleanser that also has a place in my beauty lineup, it's a steal.

Rating:  5/5!  9/22/14 Update:  I have since learned that any cleanser over 5.6 actually damages your skin (click here for full post including scientific sources) so sadly this previously loved cleanser is no longer something I can recommend.  

Repurchase: You bet.  I have had a Clarisonic for years, and have always been hunting for the perfect cleanser to pair it with-- this foam is it.  As this cleanser is a stratum corneum-wrecking nuclear pH level of 8, no.  Never again.  I miss you, Perfect Whip, but you're destroying my ability to fight off acne bacteria every time you touch my face.

Onward to the review of this strange, but brilliant, little product!