Konnyaku Sabon Facial Cleansing Soaps

Two whole years after I received these Konnyaku Sabon Facial Cleansing Soaps, at long last I opened one up to use. Their online shop has a bunch of varieties categorized by city, some even come in a couple of different scents. The one I'm using is the Tokyo Ginkgo Extract in Lavender scent.

So, as the konnyaku (konjac) may have given away, this is a ball of jelly soap. If this sounds familiar, that's because you might have seen, heard of, or used Boscia's Jelly Ball Cleanser. Yup, the same concept.

And boy oh boy this soap is super fun to play with use. It's so soft and jiggly and bouncy. It lathers well and rinses well but isn't stripping in the slightest. Without fail, I fondle lather it too much each time and always end up with way more soap than I need for my face and neck, and yet it hasn't left my skin felling taut so far. So I think it's fair to say this Tokyo Ginko Extract soap is rather mild. I don't know about the others. The lavender scent is lovely too, and not overpowering at all.

But as much fun as this soap is to use, it's just as much a pain to store. First, it doesn't work with just any soap dish and needs a lidded container. Second, it needs to stay moist in order to maintain its jiggly and bouncy texture. So the container always has to have a little of water for the soap to soak in. That's not the problem. The problem is that too little water and the soap will shrivel up, and too much water and the soap will start to dissolve until the extra water is saturated with soap. Third, taking the soap in and out of the container will guarantee some spillage, no matter how careful I am. So I can only use this soap in the shower and not at the sink counter without risking getting soapy water somewhere.

So prior to using this soap, I searched high and low for the perfect lidded container for the this soap, and in the end had to think outside of the (soap)box. Behold this perfect porcelain chawanmushi cup, exactly what I needed! Konnyaku Sabon also sells their own container, but it's plastic and I prefer something cuter ^.^