花束を君に

A place for me to share my study progress and hopefully inspire others and be inspired myself! Studying Japanese and Italian. This blog is inactive. Please check pinned post for new account.

[kenziestudies19-inactive]

New Blog

I was hoping the option to switch primary blogs was available by now after being gone from tumblr for several years but, alas it is not. :( So I'll link my new primary blog here for you to check out if you're interested in following me there as well. :)

@kenzie0704

This account is inactive and will continue to exist as an archive of sorts.

— Mackenzie

[ificouldlookoutyoureyesiwould]

bol

[fucxingcuties]

Manul

[shoku-and-awe]

Sakura doughnuts depict life cycle of cherry blossoms at Mister Donut in Japan

A delicious way to learn about four stages of the sakura, from bud to falling petals.

Hmm. I have never really been a doughnut person, but it seems like MisuDo is working to convert me specifically…...... Look at this!

I am not particularly knowledgeable about sakura, so I just now learned the four stages, which (from left to right) are:

Bud (蕾 tsubomi), represented by a pink sakura interior inside a brown kinako exterior.

Half-bloom (五分咲き gobuzaki), which is half strawberry dipped, with a cherry and red bean whipped cream filling.

Full bloom (満開 mankai), which has a sakura bean paste glaze with salted sakura petals and sakura chocolate flakes.

Dancing petals (舞桜 maizakura), which has red bean paste filling plus a half-sized decoration of sakura chocolate petals and a milk chocolate branch against a white chocolate background.

Wow. Actually, does anyone else find some of these........ kind of extra? Maybe it's my inner killjoy speaking, but there's just so much going on! I'm still trying to process the concept of a bean paste glaze, let alone a sakura bean paste glaze. Might still try it though.

[shoku-and-awe]

Oh what the FUCK guys

[shoku-and-awe]

I happened to pass a Mr Donut, which never happens, and there was no line outside, which *never* happens, so I took it as a sign and went in. They were super picked over at the end of the day, but they had one of these: the bud/tsubomi, the one I was most interested in. Definitely a sign, right?

I wasn't super hungry, so I was just gonna eat half while it was fresh and save the rest for the morning, but not only did I inhale the whole thing, I am seriously considering doing the big hill again to go get another. It is so *GOOD*! Are all pon de ring doughnuts like this?

It has an incredible springy texture, like mochi, and the sakura flavor is complex and delicate and not too sweet, and it's complemented perfectly by the nutty roasted soybean flour and (maybe?) a tiny hint of cinnamon? It's incredible. I don't even like most doughnuts but now I'm fretting that I won't have enough time to try all four of these...

[twinicegiantorbiters]

i don’t know why but i’m really amused by the winner of some ‘new kanji’ contest:

compare with the real kanji

座 (seat/gathering), but the two 人 (person) radicals have been moved from next to each other within the 土 (earth) radical to diagonally from each other, making this “social distance(d seating/gathering)”

[jadethest0ne]

This is hilarious, but to further the hilarity, I’d like to point to the fact that half of the “A rank” (runners up) for this contest also are related to 2020 epidemic jokes

First up we have:

Compare with 太

The original kanji means “to gain weight”. But it adds the コ “ko” and ロ  “ro” katakana symbols at the top to represent the weight you gain while staying home due to the corona virus.

Then we have:

Compare with 会 

The original kanjij means “meeting”, but the lower radical is changed to look more like a “Z” to represent Zoom meetings. Thus, the new kanji means “web meetings” or “zoom calls”

And of course another social distancing one:

Compare with 話 

This means “to talk” or “chat”, but it’s changed simply to show the two radicals social distancing from one another as we should also while holding conversations nowadays.

At least we can have some fun language humor despite all of this!

[niuniente]

@goromonkjima

[kirbyfanneox]

That’s really neat! 

Anyway, here’s Loss kanji again.

[tanuki-kimono]

[trulyvincent]

Shiro Kasamatsu January 11, 1898 - June 14, 1991

[japanwords]

神無月 (kan-na-zuki) "October" (archaic)

神 = god 無 = not 月 = month

The modern Japanese word for October is 十月 (literally "10th Month), however in the old-fashioned calendar is was known as 神無月, or "the month with no gods". 

In October, all the gods in Japan (there are believed to be 8 million of them) go to Izumo Shrine in Shimane Prefecture for a meeting, thus leaving most of Japan with no gods.

The huge shimenawa (sacred rope) at Izumo Shrine.

[japanwords]

It's the Month of No Gods again!

Unless you live in Shimane, in which case you get ALL THE GODS.

[tomclancysfan]

[plullaby]

[pinkakuma]

@zeewipark 

[willow-s-linda]

[autumncozy]

[fleurum]

sky.studies: warm. 🌙

[beifongkendo]

Maple leaves, by Ito Sozan (1925).

[exih]

The infantilization of japan is the craziest thing in the world to me. How can a literal country come to have the reputation of being soft kitty cat island with the animes and pokemons despite it’s very real problems with misogyny, xenophobia, nationalism, broken justice system, and etc. Like and of course I know the answer why and everyone should but like it really makes you think it really does.

[exih]

“Why can’t my country be like Japan? It has animes and pocky and school girl uniforms and they have absolutely no problems that come with being a country bc I have indulged myself in the fantasy of the existence of a real life asian wonderland and I need this”

[vitos-ordination-song]

This is something discussed in a lot of Japanese art. The Superflat movement is anti-consumerist and meant to point out the superficiality of Japan’s projected innocence. I know about this movement because of the anime Paranoia Agent, in which Satoshi Kon made the link between nuclear devastation, Japan’s “kawaii” image, and repressed guilt. Drawing on Superflat art, he used the cartoon dog Maromi to represent how Japanese people play the victim, while Lil Slugger represents the need to blame someone else and refuse to take responsibility. Basically his argument was that though Japan suffered greatly during World War II, its choice to focus on that to the exclusion of its own crimes has allowed it to insist innocence at the cost of great repression.

[kenziestudies19-inactive]

This was a fantastic post with some really great comments that I found really interesting to read. I was once Like That myself when I was like 14-15 years old, but around 16 I started reading Japanese news and articles and paying attention to Japan’s political and social issues, and reading a lot about them to properly educate myself. I still want to live there. I’m still going to school there next year. But I’m going with both the good and the bad in mind so I could make a proper decision and so I can prepare myself. There’s few things worse than having those rose-tinted glasses ripped off after you’ve moved there for school or whatever and really experienced these things first hand. It’s better to have a solid idea about the place you’re moving to before you move there — and this applies to any country!!

I think people forget that recognizing a country’s issues doesn’t mean you’re hating on them — and the “If you don’t like it don’t live here!” mentality, towards both immagrants and natives of a countries applies here. You can live somewhere and love being there while still wanting to improve the areas that aren’t so great. Recognizing issues means you know what needs to be improved upon. If you think your country, or any country, is perfect and doesn’t have problems, you’re doing it a disservice. When you know what needs to be tackled, you can now either choose to ignore it or change it for the better, and isn’t that what everyone wants, for their country to be better? When you truly love something, especially a person or a place, you want them to be the best they can be and you want what’s best for them — which means improving their trouble areas. It doesn’t mean you love them any less. Working towards fixing the issues Japan has is the only way it’s going to actually be deserving of the admiration and praise it receives, because it will then actually be those things it’s admired for. It will be able to claim those things to be true and it actually will be. Isn’t that more prideful, to be able to say your country is great in this area or that area and for it to be TRUE, than for you to claim such and it’s a lie? You can’t be proud about things that are lies, especially if you KNOW they aren’t true.

Basically, I think Japanese people (and weebs) really taking a look at Japan and recognizing the issues it has so they can fix them shows more love for the country than ignoring those issues so they can pretend they’re great.

Nothing improves if you don’t make the effort. Nothing in history has ever improved by sitting on one’s hands and ignoring issues, and I think a lot of people take these improvements for granted (like woman’s voting rights for example) and forget that these things were once issues that needed to be pointed out to be changed. You have what you have now because the people before you made the effort to fix what was wrong.

I’m very passionate about these types of things, lol.

[elisamaza]

y’all

a mutual of mine

suddenly has posts on their blog

with links to “find women to have sex with”

my mutual is NOT POSTING THESE

tumblr just got even worse

[elisamaza]

on that note PLEASE let me know if i’m suddenly posting random pictures of women with a link underneath the photo. don’t click the link, just FYI.

[elisamaza]

i do suggest reblogging this in case someone sees this happening to someone else they follow

[fardraut]

psa

if you need to abbreviate “japan” or “japanese” in any way shape or form, please for the love of god use jpn instead of jap. the word jap is a racial slur. i still see “yeah i have the jap version of (thing)” around and i’ll correct it and give the benefit of the doubt, but it still scares the bajeezus outta me!!!