August 4, 2011

Woo! All right! Here we go! A shopping review post, just as promised!

Today I would like to talk about shoes. My reasoning behind choosing this particular category is because there’s this store, see, and it’s got these pretty mind-blowing shoes.

See what I mean?

Anyway, this store is called Dream Vision. I have in the past always referred to it as “Dream V,” because that’s what’s in its url. It is also commonly referred to as “Yume Tenbo,” but I think it might be more commonly made one word as “Yumetenbo.” This store has a lot of names. The main thing you need to know is that you can shop its overseas shipping page here.

I’ve briefly mentioned Dream Vision before, in my Rakuten Shopping Guide. c: Furthermore, almost all of the shoes I’m going to spotlight in this post have already been posted on my Kawaii Shopping Tumblr, an experimental blog I set up in catalogue format, because I thought Tumblr was very well suited to that sort of thing. Unfortunately I haven’t been updating Kawaii Shopping very frequently, but, I’d love to change that. c:

So let’s move on with the feature. I’m just going to quickly highlight some of my very favorite shoes Dream Vision offers!

WAH look at those!! @3@They’re frilly and dainty and have a big bow on them. I don’t know how comfortable it is to have a ring around your toe that’s attached to your shoe, but it’s a really unique touch. I am of course partial to the ones available in white and pink.

These are super elegant.Plus they have bows on them! With hearts in the middle of the bows! This is how you take girliness and turn it into elegance.

These are slippers eeeee!!I am always wearing SOME kind of footwear around the house – I just can’t go around barefoot, or even just with socks on! I would totally love to own these, they would make me feel princessy and girlish even when I’m just chillin’ at home.

More super elegant pumps.These get major bonus points for having the heel shaped like a heart!!

Fun furry boots!!My favorite colorway is the pink boot with white fur. These would look awesome with a feminine coat.

These are SO feminine and cute.They have just a bit of a wedge, which I just love. Don’t you love the sweet colors they come in? n_n

Ahhhh more slippers!!FLUFFY BOWS!! 8U I just get really excited about some things, okay??

Did someone ask for massive flowers on their sandals?’Cause we’ve got massive flowers on our sandals.

Massive flower x3 combo

Let’s finish off this feature with these gorgeous things!That floral print looks like something vintage. Extremely ladylike. These are for going on picnics in. I LOVE the minty green colorway.

That’s all for now, but I’ll probably feature Dream Vision’s shoes again in the future, because there are just SO MANY amazing ones.

By the way, if you didn’t notice, you can click any of the images here to be brought straight to the page where you can plop them right into your shopping cart. 😀 None of these shoes are over $30, isn’t that AWESOME?! So go indulge yourselves. 8D

Shop Dream Vision now!

May 24, 2011

Lots of the shopping coverage on my site will be related to Rakuten in some way, so let’s get familiarized with it now. c:

To put it in the simplest of terms, Rakuten is a huge conglomeration of Japanese stores. It’s easy to comparatively say that Rakuten is like Japan’s Amazon. Many, but not all, of Rakuten’s stores ship internationally.

First, let’s get Rakuten’s site in English.

Wow, look at that! You were expecting everything to be in Japanese, weren’t you?

Now, to make sure that the stuff you search for can be shipped to your country, click on the corresponding flag!

This part is important!! For example, if you live in the United States, you definitely and for sure want to be browsing here, because anything you search for from that page is sure to ship to the United States – it’s automatically filtered for you!

I cannot stress enough how convenient this is. It is a huge bummer when you’ve selected all of your items and are about to check out, only to find that they can’t ship to your area. Click your flag from the main page, bookmark it, and never have to worry about it again.

Just like with Amazon, it is possible to place orders through Rakuten without an account with them, but it will be made a lot easier for you if you do. So let’s walk through how to sign up.

Everything is in English and automatically set to “For people living outside of Japan.”

Fill out all of the information as it asks – it’s basically your regular sign-up stuff.

!Note!: Sometimes, even though all of this information is asked for at signup, I still get a prompt when actually checking out. This prompt looks different and can be confusing, so I’ll post it here:

And that’s it for signing up!

Let’s move on to searching and browsing and shoppinnnnggg!!

Like I said before, you want to start with your country’s correct page, so let’s go back here and choose your corresponding country. I bookmark mine so I don’t have to repeat this step!

Type something into the search bar and that’s it! You can narrow it down by choosing categories such as Women’s Apparel or Shoes.

When I see something especially cute, I like to follow the link to the shop’s name to go to everything that shop carries! I bookmark so many of these shops it is not even funny.

When your shopping cart contains items from different shops, your order will be ‘split up’ between those shops and you’ll have to view all of your shopping carts separately.

It’s a good idea to keep your shopping sprees limited to just one or two shops, because shipping is calculated separately for each order! There is no way that I’ve ever found to combine all of your items into one big order.

Here’s my shopping cart for Dream Vision, one of my most favoritest Rakuten shops. <3

There’s not much of a difference between Checkout and Quick Checkout. Both lead to a sign-in page, and if you’ve already input your address and billing information at signup, you shouldn’t have to input any additional things for either of them. I usually choose Quick Checkout just… because… I have to choose one and Quick Checkout makes me feel better as a person, okay?! ;~;

You should always sign in before purchasing because you gradually rack up points! Every 50 points puts 1 yen in your account, and eventually it adds up and can get you some sweet little discounts!

Before clicking the final Place Your Order, you can scroll down to the bottom of the page to see what your shipping rate is going to be!

Okay, that’s the end of my guide for now! I’ll add more to this if I think of something!

Go shopping now!