New Blog

If you're reading this, you might be on the wrong page.

This blog has officially...

MOVED

Let's go!

Can't take the kid from the fight, Take the fight from the kid ♫

Haha at that last post, huh? I'm such trash. Anyway, how are you? It's been a while yet again, it would seem.

Rare weekend at home here. Usually on the weekends I'm pretty occupied (weekdays too), but recently there's been something of a stagnation and I'm finding myself logging more and more hours on the new Japanese Netflix.

Yoroshiku Hemlock Grove season 2.

My typical week used to be something like this:

But lately it's become something like this:

I know what you're thinking: Who is texting me? But that's irrelevant. 

The thing is I don't even like Netflix that much. Japan's new startup version, at least, doesn't have much to win a person over yet. Most of the series and films are outdated or not suited to my tastes. Actually most of the time I am watching Netflix, I'm feeling bored out of my mind and like I would rather do about anything else.

I know that being really sick recently and quitting one of my jobs had a lot to do with this change, but I'm starting to feel like caged animal. I miss people. I need people. Lately I have no people.

That's why I'm going crazy.

So internet, what do you do when your life is like this? Google it, right? 

Wet dish out.

♫ Now Listening - Panic! At the Disco - A Fever You Can't Sweat Out 

I'm back!

 It's been a year since I last posted on this blog. In that time, a number of things have both happened and not happened simultaneously. Currently I'm sitting in my house in Kita ward, catching up on season 8 of The Big Bang Theory and fighting the demon spice of overloading your instant bulgolgi rice with sriracha. Beer doesn't help.

 I've really been wanting to start blogging again, but it's been hard thinking of what and why. But lately I've been spending my down-time at work sort of journaling about my day, my goals, my creative ideas, and what the hell I could possibly blog about. Then when I have time at home, I copy the entries into a private live journal and sometimes even add pictures. So why not just do that here? I don't know, so I'm gonna. :D

I don't really have much more to say then that, so here's a weird food catalogue.

On Sunday my roommates and I made delicious burgers and fries for dinner after blowing a shit ton of money at the gacha gacha fair in Ikebukuro station. It was sooooo good! And not good for my diet, haha. 

If you were wondering what kind of gacha gacha we raided...

Haha! Sailor Moon make up wands and other assorted Sailor Moon figures (I might have got a Ciel from Kuroshitsuji). We have everyone's except Sailor Jupiter now. Viva nerdom!

I'm obsessed with this chuhi recently as well. It's the MANLY UME SOUR. So ume and so good. I wanna drink it everyday.

And yesterday I realised this holy combination. Ume Kara mucho (Suppa mucho!) and the Manly ume sour. My life is complete.


And there was some food cataloguing. Honestly I could do so much more though. I leave you with this...

My nails matched this Sailor Mercury make up stick that my roommate won and I couldn't resist taking the photo. When I paint my nails red again maybe I'll do a Mars version. ;)

Cheers!

Mango Clouds and Pancake Lines

Sup ya'll?

The school year is just a little over a month again and it's just starting to kick in that I'm actually somehow doing this ALT thing again for another year. And when the weight of reality hits me like this (as it did at the beginning of every term last year) I start getting the dark thoughts and weirdo retroversion to 15 year old angst. So maybe writing about the positive things in my life will help me?

Today I had a good day!

It was a rare "work day" for me, which oddly (in my company's lingo) means I have no work scheduled for the day haha. And even rarer, it was a work day for my friend, so we met up at the Laforet in Harajuku and hit up Urahara for a while.

There's always a bunch of cool looking guys leaning against the railing in front of Laforet. I watch them and think any second some cute girl is gonna come trouncing along and they'll run off to lovingly shove crepes into their orifices but it's only ever guys meeting guys. what ru doin japan.

We went to a well-concealed Taiwanese shaved ice place called MangoChaCha!

Memories of the ice cream shop I worked in for 3 days in high school come flooding back.

Points for prettiness, and it did have the weird sensation of eating a rain cloud. You know, all soft and fluffy yet dense with moisture?

I am terrifying.

Afterwards we went on a shopping tour of lots of cute tiny little shops selling pop clothing along the streets. This shop (Romantic Standard) was super cute. I might go back after payday and buy a t-shirt with a picture of Jesus and Mary in space on it.

Another bizarre thing you see in Harajuku all the time. ↗︎ Me taking photos of myself no, Random lines of people waiting for pancakes. I swear every time you come across a random line of people waiting on some back alley, there is a pancake shop nearby. Again what ru doin japan.

Went back to the Deal Design here for the first time in a million years. This place holds the best memory to me of when I was at Waseda and a friend and I went in here and I bought a chain and pendant ON A WHIM. We looked at it and priced it and told the guy I'd think about it and went away and spent the next hour in McDonalds talking about how he definitely knew I wasn't going to come back and buy it and that's why I had to prove him WRONG by going back and buying it. So I did. And then we all chatted about the GazettE for a while and it was awesome. Thinking about that still makes me grin. :)

I terrifyingly might go back and purchase a pendant here for 15000 when I get paid, too, depending on the outcome of PIERROT tickets. Despite needing to pay for the bills I haven't paid in a month. Despite needing to buy a damn table. Despite wanting to move so bad it hurts and needing to save for the fee. Despite basically everything. 

Ugh money. Another matter for another day. It's ticket investigation time.

Cheers!

Catching Up and... alcohol

Hi, there! Long time no blog. I keep meaning to come back and blog here, but it feels like blogger is just so isolated from my other social media outlets (not that I'm super active on those), so in a way it feels pointless. But if I'm writing for myself then what does it matter, eh? Yea, let's go with that.

The New Years Resolutions of last post, hm. Well, I definitely haven't kept up with the writing, and I haven't been incredibly explorative (word?). As for thinking positively; I'm not sure if it was the rush of the school year ending, all the alcohol, or just the cycle of unhappiness lifting, but I think I've been doing better on this one. :3

What have I been up to lately? Not so much...

Going drinking with friends, mostly. We had an epic string of Friday nights, that have become more randomised since spring break started.

Random wandering and drinking in Shinjuku. This^ is a magical taiyaki we bought in front of Studio Alta. It's anko paste inside of croissant bread instead of the usual taiyaki cake-like bread. Super delicious and only 200 yen if you're over there. (Watch out, though, the line gets massive.)

My friend trying to get a better picture of the sign. Haha

To add to the heaps of (unhealthy) drinking, got a magical bottle of Moet & Chandon as a gift from my friend. Drank this a few weeks later and had an epically hungover day at work. :/

Happiness is not a warm gun. (We were in the HUB, btw; random white girl in the bg.)

Another random thing I'm enjoying too much these days is graffiti and sticker art around Shibuya. Live house staircases and bar walls.

If my life could just look like this. ^

This one from a staircase of a rock bar where we ended up going to randomly watch an air guitar competition. There was an MC and he would introduce the acts, who would each get up on the tiny stage and pretend to rock out to a song. The most epic was this older guy in a suit and a fedora. To look at him you would have thought he was a normal salaryman with a penchant for headgear, but when his song started he went wild. It was simultaneously one of the most impressive and hilarious things I've seen in my life (there's a list I've got going of those, I kid you not).

These pictures are from a while ago, though. I've had my hair cut since then...

This one with my hair up. It was really quite long.

New length around my chin, and maybe a little fuller and longer than I would like in the back.

One of my friends convinced me to try his salon in Omotesando, where all of the salons charge you out the bleep, because I guess he wanted to be helpful, so I tried it out. However, I don't know about you, but in my experience, I can tell if I'm going to like my haircut pretty much as soon as I meet the stylist. This may be some psychological result of my interaction with a person I don't quite find reliable or some nonsense, however this has generally been true my entire life. One of the best haircuts I ever had was given to my by one of my college roommates, and she was not in the least a trained professional. Anyway, I haven't quite enjoyed the cut itself, but it's been so nice to have it short, that I've been able to over look it. :)

I'm also a bit homesick lately. Not quite sure what that's about. It might because I caught the flu over my break and have been forced to spend a lot more time than I would have liked laying in bed and watching youtube videos. I never really thought about it when I lived in the US, because it was normal there, and even years of living here in Japan it was never an issue to me, but life in the US is really kind of ballin'. Driving around in cars, eating Doritos, cocktails that taste worth enjoying, wearing huge sunglasses without people thinking you're the biggest douche bag on the planet and/or a tourist... It's weird to me that this is my idea of ballin'.

But yea. This has been cathartic. 

I'm addicted to Mamrie Hart's youtube segment "You Deserve A Drink". ♡

Happy New Year! ミ☆

Happy 2014, everybody! Just finished watching Kathy Griffin making Anderson Cooper crazy uncomfortable while the ball dropped over here. Actually didn't have a very exciting new years celebration here, so we'll skip that. I'm interested, what's your new years resolution for 2014?

As I wrote on twitter, I came home on the 21st. My mum decided at the last minute that since I had so much unscheduled time over the holidays she would just buy a ticket and ship me home, so home I came. (Granted I did miss Plastic Tree, the GazettE, Sendai Kamotsu, and Angelo lives respectively.)

My connecting flight from San Francisco was balls awful, btw. Seven hour layover on a 9 and half hour flight with no sleep (and not a penny on me to buy a water or anything while I waited). Then the actual connecting flight to Atlanta was super turbulent and I got sick. Never want to repeat this experience if possible.

Jet lag has also been a bit off this time around. Usually I'm snoozing by 9pm and up reading or drawing with a coffee by 5am during my first week or so, but this time it's been opposite. Sleep kicks in around 5am and then I'm up and at it around 1pm.

Anyway, I got home just in time to get in the mood and celebrate Xmas with the fam. Which mainly consists of me drinking at any and every possible occasion.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Xmas and got lots of great things! My real present this year (to myself, lol) was my MacBook. So from Santa this year I got a few bucks to put toward covering it as I continue to pay it off over the next couple of months. I did get some other lovely things, though...

Yay! These converse aren't as blatantly red as they appear; they're actually kind of pink. I adore them! I've been wearing them out every day since I got them. I also got some Ciate nail polish in yellow with a vial of these colourful sprinkle-like beads in different colours to accent. It's strangely Eastery, though, haha.

Also, since I told my family I wanted nail polish, my sister assembled this for me...

12 bottles of nail polish and my facial moisturiser from Origins! She literally just went into the store and picked every shade she would never wear in a million years and got it, haha.

I also got a furry hat, some lotion, and a portable DVD player thing (which I will hook up to a TV and use as an actual DVD player, haha). Hope you guys got some good stuff too!

Anyway, I have to be honest and say I haven't really enjoyed this trip home like I thought I would. It's been sort of a bitter pill for me, especially after my good friend from Waseda came to hang out and drink with me the night before I headed back. I feel like every time I remember why I loved living in Japan, lately, reality sort of punches me in the face soon after. It's difficult to explain and I know it's mostly psychological and probably just a part of growing up, but... Growing up sucks.

I guess I'm sort of in a place right now where I don't feel like I belong anywhere. I know I don't belong in Japan, Japan is for the Japanese and I feel like it will always be that way. I also see very clearly that I don't belong back here where I grew up, but that's not really surprising, since I never really felt like that when I lived here either.

Which brings me to the point of this entire post (aside from wishing you season's greetings and showing off my pretty things): New Years Resolutions.

I've never been big on them, but I'm hoping to give it a real go with three resolutions I'm going to try to make good on. After all, can one really improve without setting some sort of goal to improve toward?

_________________________________

2014 New Years Resolutions of a dish

1. Write More - It hasn't been long, granted, but since I've gotten my new computer I've started keeping a very casual, jot-like journal in the memo pad. It's simple: a date, a time, some kind of list or random feeling or simple description of what I've been doing. I've never been a good journaler, but I can't help but feel like I'm thinking a bit more clearly when I'm writing my thoughts these days.

2. Think Positive - I've been in a rut, and I do believe in the power of positive thinking. I really want to get back into that positive mindset. I think that positive thinking even when it all seems bad can help you get through all kinds of difficult situations, so I'm going to put that belief to practice this year. I'm going to have a good year. ("Year of Penny!")

3. Explore - This year is the year of exploration. I wanna go new places and do new things. I've lived in Japan for about 4 years now all together, and there's just really no excuse for not having seen more than I have. This year I'm going to explore everything and reawaken that childlike curiosity that sent me there to begin with. I think I'm going to start with that damn Sky Tree!

_________________________________

I'm interested in what resolutions you guys are planning for this year and whether you've ever had much success in keeping them? I know it's easy to feel like the world is your oyster at 1:30am on Jan 1st, but there's no telling how things will be come February, right? POSITIVE THINKING.

I know. I need to calm down on the Kahlua before bed.

Anyway, tl;dr.

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYBODY!ミ☆

Snagged this from the post right before I headed out for the states.

Thanks for the lovely card, Ande!

MacBook Love

Hello! Sorry to be so absent lately. Ever since my old computer become impossible to read/write on I thought I would use my phone to update and instead of just leaving this blog alone, but yappa the blogger app for iPhone just sucks. I tried posting once or twice from it and it just wouldn't seem to update properly.

I still think keeping a blog, keeping a sort of record of things I've done, what I'm thinking is important, though, so I still want to keep updating. I like twitter style, just saying what I think when I think it, but in the end, it doesn't amount to much does it. Oh well, my new xmas/bday present to myself should make my whole world much better.

I wrote it on twitter and instagram already, but I got a...

A MacBook! Technically, a 13" MacBook Pro with retina screen. ♡

It's small and adorable and sleek and beautiful and just basically everything and more than I could ever need. Since I started looking at new computers there were several I was interested in, but all the positive feedback about Macs just finally burrowed its way into my core after all. I am almost a complete virgin to Mac, too, so I was worried about learning to use it, but I have been super surprised to find it's incredibly user friendly. I love and am abusing the little finger swipe mechanism right now too, to go back and forth and move around etc. I'm shocked how much it works like my iPhone.

The one thing that has startled me though, is that I just made this purchase Monday, not a week ago yet and already the system has just frozen on me completely twice. wtf is dat

But I will go back to the store and figure out what the shit is going on this week. :D

Anyway, I'm poor again, yay! Cheers!

Computer Problems

Hey, long time no update! How are you guys? (That picture was for one of my schools so they can tell each class who's having lunch with me, lol) 

I've been wanting to update recently, but my computer is on the... Eh... What's that expression? I dunno, but it looks like this pretty much constantly: 

Yah. I even got a cheap tv on Craigslist to hook up as a monitor, but pretty much every site I look at tells me it's not going to work very well so I'm hesitant to buy the appropriate connectors. Damn you, windows vista.

Anyway, it's Sunday afternoon of Halloween weekend and I'm getting over the most exciting cold ever. I've literally done nothing but sleep, sneeze, and attempt to watch Metalocalypse all weekend, which I guess was necessary after going to work with a fever two days in a row, but sucks when I see people's awesome instagram photos from Halloween parties. Guh.

Anyway, now that the blogger app for iPhone seems to be a little easier to work with, I will update more. Hope you guys are having a good Halloween weekend!

Cheers!

If you recognize that photo👆, you know that my mind is in a sad, fan girly place right now.

Rainy and Going Home

It's so bleak out this week After getting caught in a sudden downpour in Shibuya the other day after going to see that gallery exhibition Ruki mentioned on twitter, I haven't been so keen to go out. I don't know why I just hate carrying an umbrella such that I'd rather stay home.

「WORLD OF INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM 1」

The exhibit was really modest but quite nice I thought. Yoda Koji (依田耕治) has done a lot of album covers and art for various bands (Dir en grey, the GazettE, Angelo, more), but his pieces are really interesting on their own. Especially if you bought the TOXIC album and are familiar with the illustrations inside the book, you'll recognize his style. Lots of cut-outs and layering, geometric designs, heavy religious imagery. He had two pieces, ILLEGAL FAMILY and WITHER which I especially liked. If you're in the Tokyo area, I recommend having a look for yourself. YUBISUI's work is much more graphic, like his Six Guns art for the GazettE, but cute and colorful. I didn't realize just how wide-spread his work is, honestly.

Died my hair btw.

I'm going home for a few weeks on Saturday, to the US. While I'm there I will listen to all my old mix CDs from high school and look at my old sketchbooks and think about how things were, as we do when we get older. Hopefully when I come back, I will feel some life has returned to me.

This morning after fighting with my mother again on skype an old friend from high school messaged me and we just talked about nothing for an hour or so. Literally, I think it was mostly just making puns at each other, no real communication, but I felt so happy then. I often feel like I am talking to walls, but I guess everyone feels like that.

And on that bleak note.

Shave Them Legs

Like them sexy feet? It seems like a majority of people in this world are terrified or disgusted of feet for some reason or another. I mean, I understand not wanting other people's feet in your face and all, but foot-phobia is generally quite puzzling to me. Anyway.

Just jumped out of the shower on my super work-free Friday and took some extra time to do a hair mask and shave my legs (even though I suck at it and had to touch it up as soon as I put on my shorts), and am pondering something that has plagued me ever since I started shaving my legs to begin with.

Now, I'm from the southern US, Georgia to be specific, and my mother is a pretty southern as far as southern goes, and she raised me in what I can only assume is a very southern way. When I was first "old enough" (oo la la!) to shave my legs I remember my mother telling me, "A lady never need shave more than an inch above the knee."

And unless I'm wearing something particularly short without tights (which is only in the dead of summer like now), its generally a rule I follow.

The problem is, now is baking outside and there's just no way to get by without flashing some thigh and I just want to shave hell out of them. Uggggh but the hair is so thin and light, it takes forever and I can never seem to get it all. It's quite possibly the bane of my existence right now.

So I'm just curious. What do you do to make this process easier?

And I'm off work for summer now! It's so nice to have a long, work-free summer vacation for once without have to take any huge exams to get there, haha. Cheers!

^ I walk past this place on the way to work sometimes. I can't tell if it's a plant shop, a gardeny cafe, or just someone's private gardeny world, but it's amazing. Through the windows there are so many plants and just these sparsely hanging light bulbs creating the most perfect ambiance you've ever seen.

Things I'm "Digging" Lately

I made another vlog post. I can't help it, the last was really fun and I had some free time, so :/

 So, if you watched that, those are some things I'm into recently. Also super psyched because my Asian Kung-Fu Generation and lynch. tickets just got here while I was posting that. I didn't mention AKFG in that video because my Gorillaz love is a little overwhelming right now, but AKFG is also something I'm getting back into after a long time. I really like there latest album to bits. Like it to bits.

 And I finally got curtains, so finally the neighbors don't have to endure my naked... tada!

\

embrace the paisley

And then the other day in Shibuya I saw this... tada!

hide museum bus! feels! 8D

And that's all. Later!

3 min Make-Up Challenge!

Good morning!

I don't usually destroy my drive for success so early in the day, nor do I usually make vlogs (and by that I mean never), but today was a special kind of work day, so I decided to do something unusual. And actually I still haven't been called in to work yet, so at 10am I'm removing this shit and going back to sleep, haha.

Anyway, if you watch it and read this, I'm tagging YOU! I shared my failure with you, so please give it a try and share a link to your video! We can comfort each other, haha.

I did finish it eventually, btw. I don't really wear much when I go to work, nor recently since it's gotten hot because my skin is so rough and it melts. But when finished:

Cheers!

Plans to Destroy Myself

Good morning!

My work shoes I posted on instagram a couple of months ago. They're probably even worse now since I've just kept wearing them.

I don't know how quickly we are affected by such things, but sort of frighteningly I've started to notice I'm tripping up more often in more normal shoes, and on my right foot too, like I'm swinging it too low or something. DD8

Maybe it's just my inherent lack of grace though, I can't say.

Have a nice day!