Ingredients: olive oil, water, coconut oil, sodium hydroxide, palm oil, rice bran, essential oils (if scented)
-Extra moisturizing ability
-Relaxing soft grain texture and warm color
-Especially good for dry skin
I think the most common Japanese traditional skin care provisions are rice bran and the hechima loofa. (For hechima loofa, I wrote about it in an earlier post, please check it out! )
Rice bran is very famous for its fullness of nutrition and moisturizing power in Japan.
This soap always gives me that “whoa” feeling after I shower.
Rice bran gives the soap rich bubbles with high viscosity.
It seems like these viscous bubbles take unnecessary stuff with it from your body so it all gets washed away with water.
This is the first characteristic of the soap I noticed.
If it’s scented, you should be able to smell it in the bubbles.
In Japan, we call nice youthful skin “rice cake skin.”
If your skin is very rejuvenated, smooth and soft like rice cake, then you’ve got it! My dad told me one time very proudly that his skin used to be called “rice cake skin” when he was younger. haha
When I used this soap for the first time, I felt that my skin got really like rice cake. My rice cake skin was so replenished that it felt very soft and supple!
The feeling lasted till next time I showered.
It was a realization that this is how my ancestors treated their skin from hundreds of years ago on the island. Even after many eras, it still is as effective as it was back then!
I thought about these women taking care of their skin with rice bran, and even felt that I am a part of the history. haha
The main content of this soap is olive oil to maximize its moisturizing power.
Rice bran oil is not used for this soap to give it a longer shelf life. If rice bran oil is used, although it gives a soap soft refreshing texture, its shelf life gets way shorter. It probably needs some preservatives, but with this soap I made you have no worries.
I also enjoy its warm and soft golden color with some brown pieces.
It takes at least a month to make cold process soaps. Within this one month, every soap changes its appearance.
I always love seeing it! It’s as if I’m seeing my kids growing up. haha
This “Call of Beauty” always shows me incredible changes. From a little daughter to a cute teenager, and to a mature beautiful woman. How lovely :)
I have a special feeling about rice bran.
My family have plenty of rice fields in the countryside and grow rice every year. Our yearly schedule is actually still based on the life cycle of rice. haha
Harvested rice is kept in our family homes and every time we steam rice, we polish it first to make it easier to eat. So we always have plenty of rice bran at home.
(For polishing rice, please refer here. We have rice polishing machines at home.)
My mom and grandma use it for everything; boiling bamboo shoots, polishing floors, enriching the fields, making pickles and so on. (My grandma’s pickles are so tasty! ;P)
When the time comes, I know I will do the same. She already taught me how to.
I guess this is a tradition that is taken over generation by generation.
Rice bran treatment is one of the secrets of Japanese beauty. Haha
I hope this tradition will continue even a little as it is a very heart-warming way to take care of our skin and house stuff. This is absolutely not the most convenient way and it is difficult to apply traditional ways in our modern hectic lives. But I love the memories attached to this rice bran and it means a lot to me.
So a hybrid of modern ways and traditional ways sound perfect for me. :)
P.S.
I don’t know why men like this video game Call of Duty that much.
My brothers, brothers-in law, husband, friends … everybody plays it! I always talk about this with my sister – why do they like it???
They even play it for hours and hours! It is a universal thing; when I first saw my husband playing it, I just thought “Oh you too.”
Anyway somehow this word, Call of Duty was stuck in my head and when me and my husband were driving outside, listening to the radio in the car, the word this MC said sounded “Call of beauty” to me.
She didn’t say so but it was a similar sound and since I was very familiar with the name, I decided to take that name for this rice bran soap, “Call of Beauty” as this is exactly the purpose of this soap. :)
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