Shunkashuutou

Welcome to the new and improved Shunkashuutou! Keep an eye on this sidebar for polls and new information! What kind of content would you like to see more of? Send me a message and let me know! All suggestions are welcome!

[shunkashuutou]

Blog Renewal!

Over the last 4 years, this blog has just been too difficult to keep up, and even though I often took photos with the intention of posting them, it just wasn’t happening.

But I recently realized how much I missed having this space, so I want to revive my blog!

Goodbye to my old blog layout. It was a good time, but wow I had no idea what I was doing back then when I combined a bunch of different themes to make that layout. (Now I could code the entire layout from scratch if I really wanted to, but I also don’t have time for that kind of stuff these days, so I found this cool theme by @themesbymoo and tweaked it a bit.)

What to expect from here!

I want to make some changes to make posting on my blog more manageable for me, and make the content of the blog more interesting for you!

There will still occasionally be long posts, but hopefully nothing so long that it crashes tumblr like some of my posts used to! I want to keep it casual and easy for me to post whatever, whenever.

I want more feedback from my readers! After 9 years of living in Japan, I’ve gotten so used to things here that sometimes I don’t realize what might be new and interesting to my blog readers! Please feel free to message me anytime with any questions you have or suggestions of content that you would like to see!

And don’t forget to sign up for update notification emails if you don’t have a tumblr account! Details in the “Ask & FAQ” section in the bar at the top of the screen.

では、改めてよろしくお願いします！

[shunkashuutou]

A Rainy Day at Home

I cleaned my apartment yesterday! It was getting pretty messy (partially just because I don’t have enough space to really put everything away properly), and especially since I’m staying home all the time now, I thought I should do some cleaning and organizing!

It turned out so great that I took some photos! (Because it might not ever look this nice again before I move into a bigger apartment with Mabs later this year)

It’s so small that I could get pretty much my entire apartment in the frame.

I really like the color scheme I have going on; I love these curtains and this comforter cover so much.

My tiny bathroom

The view from the entryway

My kitchen, which is about 30% just refrigerator.

It was raining lightly outside and it was so pretty as it started to get dark.

I found this wonderful FF7 lofi remix playlist, and I had it on repeat all of yesterday. (Please listen to it while looking at the above photo; such a good atmosphere)

[shunkashuutou]

🔥PROMARE🔥

Get ready, this is going to be a long post.

So starting at the end of last September, Mabs and I fell in love with a movie called “Promare”, and we went to see it in the theater 4 times. This movie actually came out in May of 2019, and we missed it the first time it was in theaters, but it was so popular that theaters started showing it again in the fall. It was made by Studio Trigger, which also made some of my other favorite anime, Kiznaiver and Little Witch Academia. (and BNA which Mabs and I are watching right now!)

So what is Promare about, and was it really worth watching in the theater 4 times?

I feel like these titles of articles about it sum it up pretty well:

Promare is set in a future where some people, referred to as “Burnish”, spontaneously develop fire powers. The Burnish start off as normal humans and have no control over over their powers at first, which leads to them accidentally burning down buildings or injuring other people, so they are feared and shunned by human society. The main character Galo is a member of a firefighting team called Burning Rescue, while the other main character Lio is the head of Mad Burnish, a notorious group of Burnish arsonists.

Here’s a trailer:

It’s colorful, crazy, and over-the-top in true Studio Trigger style, so action-packed that you can’t look away for a single second, and it is one of the most visually amazing movies I have ever seen. (The only thing that is even sort of comparable to this vibrant 2D + 3D animation style would be “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse”) The color palettes in every single scene of this movie are just incredible. It’s technically a mecha anime with giant fighting robots, but its story deals with themes of discrimination, and it even has a bit of gay romance mixed in, which is a huge step forward for a Japanese movie aimed at a mainstream audience.

All of the characters are wonderful, but especially the main duo Galo and Lio. It’s great to watch as they come to understand one another and work together. They’re both enthusiastic idiots who are the same type of crazy, which to me is both “relationship goals”, as well as the sort of relationship that I am lucky enough to be in.

It also has great voice acting, with the actor who played Sanada Yukimura in the Taiga Drama “SanadaMaru” as the mayor of the town, Kray Foresight (what a name), and the kabuki actor who played Ranbei in the movie “Dokurojo no Shichinin” (which is a super underrated, but another personal favorite ) as Lio.

And the MUSIC. This movie has the most amazing soundtrack, and it’s usage throughout the film is just perfect.

In particular, the scene featuring Lio’s theme “Kakusei” (”Awakening”) includes a volcano and a dragon and is just so INTENSE. In fact, the chorus of this song is not Japanese or English, but entirely made-up words, so that it would be able to convey feeling but not have the words distract viewers from the action.

“Inferno”, the opening track of the movie which is written from Galo’s perspective, is another very memorable song.

Also “Nexus” and “Gallant Ones” and aaa, just so much good music on this soundtrack. (The song lyrics from Lio’s and Galo’s perspectives also tell a bit more of their story) Search “Promare ost” on YouTube to find a full playlist of all of the music if you want to hear more!

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And now it’s time for the story of how I’ve seen this movie 6 times now, 4 of which were in theaters.

The first time Mabs and I went to see Promare was after school one day. We got bibimbap and zunda daifuku for dinner first, and when we went to the theater, they were giving out these cool postcards!

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The second time was on the first day of Halloween Month, so we got some Halloween donuts to celebrate before watching the movie!

This was right before Promare was going to stop showing in the theaters again, but we really wanted to see it one more time (there is so much going on in this movie, you have to watch it more than once), and the only showing that worked with both of our schedules was one that was marked “応援上映”, which I didn’t think too much about and just assumed that it was an extra showing to promote the movie.

But we knew that something was different when the person sitting next to us started pulling colored lights out of her bag. It turns out that an “ouen jyouei” is special interactive showing of a movie in which fans are encouraged to wave colored lights, yell out their favorite lines, and sing along with the songs. We were definitely not expecting that! It’s interesting too because “ouen jyouei” clearly have their own sort of culture. It wasn’t just like people were yelling out whatever they were thinking, there were set phrases and responses that fans would say at certain times. These responses were probably developed over a long period of lots of fans watching the movie over and over again; I wonder how many times the other people in that theater had seen Promare already.

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It was around this time that Mabs and I found out that there was going to be a cosplay event conveniently close to Osaka Station at the end of October. We were both very in need of a change of pace, so we decided to go and cosplay Galo and Lio! To make things faster, we divided up the work, Mabs sewed the outfits and I made the wigs. (We also decided to share the cosplays because we both like both characters!)

Galo’s wig was a big challenge because I had never made a wig with a foam base before. First I patterned out the spikes with paper.

Then I cut them out of eva foam, assembled them and painted them blue, and glued layers of wig wefts over the top of them. After the glue dried, I trimmed off the excess hair and hairsprayed them into perfect (slightly dangerous) points, and used hot glue to attach the spikes to the wig base. I don’t know how much time this took, but definitely over 30 hours!

Lio’s wig was so much easier. The wig I got worked great as a base, and I just had to trim it, fluff it up, and add a couple different shades of green hair chalk to get the gradient that Lio has going on.

I am really happy with how they turned out!

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After that it was almost time for the cosplay event, but a few days before, Promare came back to theaters, this time in 4D! It was our first time ever seeing a 4D movie and it was an experience! The seats moved all around and shot out blasts of air and mist, and the lights in the theater flashed to go with the movie. Promare with all of its crazy action was absolutely perfect as a 4D movie, and it was so much fun!! They also gave us this super cool postcard to celebrate the 4D release. I think this is probably my favorite piece of official Promare art.

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And then it was time for the cosplay event!

We had such a fun day, and Mabs looked great as Galo! We ate pizza of course, since the characters eat pizza in the movie.

I was really happy with how I looked as Lio! Here’s a selfie, and a bonus ~fashion~ selfie with my favorite sunglasses.

We met a few new cameramen who took photos for us!

I love that Mabs is strong enough to pick me up for photos! This picture turned out cute!

And I had a lot of fun doing photo edits with flames and lots of crazy colors, since that is very Promare!

Before and After🔥

Before... (I liked the pose but not the background)

... After! (I had fun trying to get this one to look like a scene from the movie!

Using the song lyrics as backgrounds

And of course we took some silly offshots as well! These were my favorites!

Since we made the cosplays to share, next time we get a chance to wear them, I’ll be Galo and Mabs will be Lio! I can’t wait to see how we’ll look!

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The movie came out on DVD and Blu-ray at the beginning of February, and Mabs had pre-ordered the special box set! (I wish I had a photo of the box and all of the extra stuff! So cool!) We had a fun time watching it at home and eating pizza! This movie drastically increased our pizza consumption. Particularly margherita pizza since that’s what the characters eat. I had always thought that it looked boring compared to pepperoni or deluxe, but I now understand the wonders of margherita pizza.  (Also look at the cute Galo and Lio cat ear plushies! Mabs got me a set for Christmas and they are adorable!)

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Promare got put back in theaters in 4D AGAIN, on Valentine’s Day!! Of course we thought that sounded like the perfect V-day date idea, so we decided to go see it one more time, even though we already had it on Blu-ray!

So this year I made Mabs Promare-themed chocolates for Valentine’s Day! Yes, these are real, edible chocolates! (I had fun doing a little photoshoot of them before I gave them to her)

I found this wonderful triangular Engrish box at the 100 yen shop and customized it a bit with some shiny pink cellophane.

I made the chocolates by first drawing out the designs I wanted, and cutting up some regular chocolates into the right shapes to use as a base. Then I used colorful chocolate pens to cover the base layer and add the designs!

Before our date, I tried to do Promare-inspired nail polish too.

This is one of my new favorite photos of us! We had such a nice V-day date!

So glad that we got to see Promare AGAIN! And 4D is just the best way to see it! This time we saw it at a different theater than the first time we saw it in 4D, and the movement of the seats was programmed a little differently, which was interesting! This time we could also distinctly smell the rose fragrance when Galo sees Lio for the first time.

Absolutely the perfect Valentine’s Day movie. As Mabs put it, what could be more romantic than overthrowing the government, saving the environment, and setting the entire world on fire together?

And we had pizza for dinner that day, of course!

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Also in February, the Lawson near my school did a special Promare collaboration! It looked so cool, and they had a bunch of posters up all over the inside too!

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And a bit after that, some special Promare merch that had gone out of stock before I even watched Promare the first time got restocked! I needed some new shirts anyway so I couldn’t resist, and Mabs and I placed an order.

I love these plushies so much! They are so cute with their little noodle arms and legs!

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Now that I think about it more, I can’t figure out if we’ve watched Promare 6 times or 7 times. But the most recent time was with strawberry waffles (our food obsession changed from pizza to strawberry waffles after playing Tales of Zestiria, lol)

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Promare will be released on DVD in English in the US on May 19th! I’ve heard that the English dub is really well done, so I can’t wait to see it that way too!

I HIGHLY recommend this movie to anyone and everyone! It’s worth watching for the color palettes alone, but the animation, characters, and music make it one of my all-time favorite movies!

[shunkashuutou]

✨✨✨Amabie✨✨✨

Recently social media sites have been full of drawings of a bird-mermaid creature, tagged with the hashtag #amabiechallenge.

I had never heard of Amabie before, so I looked it up, and Amabie is a youkai (Youkai are Japanese mythical creatures. There are tons of cool youkai and the term covers a lot of the range of what we might call fairies / creatures / monsters / spirits in English) that looks like a three-tailed mermaid with long hair and a bird beak.

This is, from what I can tell, the original Amabie picture, probably from the mid-1800s.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the legend of the Amabie:

There was only ever this one sighting of an “amabie”, but there are many stories of similar yokai called “amabiko”, so some people think that “amabie” was just a misspelling.

Anyway, because drawing Amabie and showing your illustration to others is said to help ward off pandemic, the #amabiechallenge has blown up across the internet and people have been drawing all sorts of cool amabies!

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has even started using Amabie in some of their public service announcements about social distancing.

Obviously with this youkai being a weird magical part-fish thing, I have come to really love Amabie, and when I realized that I have a long wig that would work, I really wanted to try cosplaying Amabie! Also even though the whole point of the #amabiechallenge is that Amabie specifically said that it would help cure disease if you showed people a picture of it, I thought it would be a fun challenge not only to draw Amabie, but to try to cosplay Amabie using only things you have in your house! With cosplay events being all cancelled, and everyone at home all the time, it seemed like a great way to spend some quarantine time! So I’ve been trying to get the #amabiecosplaychallenge to catch on, because I want to see everyone’s Amabie closet cosplays!

Here’s the look that I came up with! Since you can do anything you want with the colors, and there’s so much freedom with the design, it was a fun chance to be creative with it!

I made the mask out of a cereal box after making a paper pattern.  (Cereal boxes don’t even exist in Japan, the like 4 types of cereal that we have here all come in bags. Mabs’ dad sent us full-sized shredded wheat since I had only had Shredded Mini Wheats before, so I used the box from that! The shredded wheat were huge and I actually really liked them!!) I hot-glued it all together and then painted it with some acrylics (and foundation lol) that I had laying around. I’m glad I thought to make the beak and ears all once piece, it made it really easy to wear.

I had fun taking a lot of photos! 

The makeup closeups are my favorite photos though; I love how the colors turned out!

In particular, I made good use of the Huda Beauty Sapphire Obsessions eyeshadow palette for all of the scales and the blue shading, the Anastasia Beverly Hills Aurora highlighter palette to make the scales shiny, blue Sephora mascara for the eyelashes and eyebrows, and Urban Decay Heavy Metal glitter eyeliner along the edges of the scales (this made a huge difference!) And of course a little of the Fruit Sorbet palette because when do I not use this palette when doing colorful makeup. (for the pink and orange) And I forgot to put it in the photo, but Maybelline metallic teal liquid eyeliner to define the edges of the scales!

I had a lot of pairs of these light blue contacts laying around from my Small Might cosplay from My Hero Academia, and they were great for this! The color is so bright!

Hope you are all staying safe and healthy indoors at home! And if any of you want to try to cosplay Amabie, be sure to tag it as #amabiecosplaychallege; I would love to see more Amabie cosplayers out there!

[shunkashuutou]

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

I have been waiting for this game for YEARS, and it is better than I ever could have imagined!

For those of you who don’t know, the Final Fantasy VII Remake (or FF7R for short) is, as its name suggests, a remake of the classic, well-loved PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII that was originally released in 1997.

Here's one of the Japanese trailers, since Mabs and I played it in Japanese.  This is my favorite of the many trailers that were released, since it has a good balance of story and action without too many spoilers.

Also if you don’t care about some spoilers and just want to see more of the game check out this trailer:

And this one that includes some parts from the famous crossdressing quest:

You can find these trailers in English too if you search “final fantasy vii remake trailer” on YouTube.

Also, here are some photos of me being incredibly excited about my new PS4 and the game. (Yes I bought a PS4 specifically for this game, and it was 100% worth it)

Green is the color I think of when I think of FF7, so I did green makeup on the game release day

If you preordered the game from 7-Eleven, it came with a very cute acrylic stand, and a code to download chocobo chick materia in the game!

I also bought myself this cute, limited-edition “berry blue” color controller!

But back to the game. First of all, I just have to say, THE GRAPHICS. Video games have come incredibly far in the 23 years since the original game was released. All of the characters and every minute detail of the landscapes is so beautiful now!

You could spend hours just walking around looking at all of the environments! And in the story you often visit the same places at different times of day, and it’s so cool to see them with different lighting.

This is actually only about the first third of the original game, since it would be impossible to recreate the entirety original game in this much detail and have it fit on one disc (the other two installments of the remake trilogy will be released at an unannounced time in the future, probably in a couple years) They’ve also greatly expanded the story, but in a good way that doesn’t feel like just filler to take up time. The’ve added a lot more interactions between the characters (both the main characters and other residents of the city of Midgar, who you can talk to in side quests) These interactions give you a chance to get to know the characters’ personalities better, and give a fuller picture of what life is like in Midgar’s slums. (Which gives you the emotional connection that makes some of the tragic events of the game all that much more painful.)

And I just have to say, this game’s message of overthrowing the government and protecting the environment is even more timely now than it was in 1997...

Also the scene at the Honeybee Inn got changed in ways that were better than I could have ever imagined! I am so thankful for the direction they chose to go with updating that part of the game for a modern audience. No spoilers for those who haven’t played it yet, but I did not expect a fun and hilarious minigame!

Another thing that was very impressive was the amount of voice acting that went into this game. Everywhere you go, there are a ton of NPCs (non-player characters, the characters that just stand around in the background) and they’re all talking all the time. It was almost a little overwhelming at first, but it helps to make Midgar feel like a real, complete world.

The battle system also got a super fun new update! The original FF7 was a traditional turn-based RPG, but it has become a much faster-paced action RPG, which I think was a great choice for a modern console game. (And it still has an setting that allows you to play it as turn-based, so fans of the original game who may not like action games won’t be disappointed either.) The learning curve for getting used to the battle system is a bit steep (also due to the button assignments not being very intuitive at first), but once you get used to it, it’s one of the most fun battle systems of any game I’ve played! You can switch between characters mid-battle, whenever you want and as many times as you like, which is something that I’ve ALWAYS wanted from an action RPG (I know that somewhere in one of my high school notebooks, I have a page written out about how a battle system like that would work and how fun it would be), and I am so happy that my wish finally got granted in FF7R of all games!

FF7 is a classic, so going into the remake I was a little nervous to see how they’d change things, but overall, I really don’t have any big complaints. The addition of the Feelers (I think they’re called “Whispers” in English?) felt a little like they were just there to be a convenient way to clear up some minor plot holes, but depending on the direction that they take with them in the next two games, I think they might actually tie in very well later on.

Also now that we’ve finished the game once in Japanese, we’re going through and replaying some parts in English. While some lines have been localized in ways that are fun and hilarious, I’m finding that a lot of the English voices are a little overacted or flat, and the emotion just doesn’t come through quite as well as it does in the Japanese version. (I was a bit surprised because the dub of FFXIII was great.) I’m glad that I played FF7R in Japanese first.

My main complaint is that there’s not enough! I really wish we didn’t have to wait a few years until the next two parts of this game get released, but I also want Square Enix to take as much time as they need to work on the next two parts, because this quality is amazing.

10/10, FF7R exceeded all of my expectations!

We’ll end this post with a picture of the super cute little figurines I got of the characters in their polygon forms from the original FF7.

Can’t wait for FF7R Part 2! 

[shunkashuutou]

2020: ShuuKatsu, Spring Break, Corona, and FF7R

Hello everyone! Long time no update!

I meant to post something to say happy new year, but life just keeps getting busier and busier! So it’s time for some updates!

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- SHUUSHOKU KATSUDOU -

I’ll be heading into my final year of studies here soon, which means that it’s shuushoku katsudou (就職活動) season here. “Shuushoku katsudou” (often shortened to just “shuukatsu”) is basically job hunting, but unlike in America, it’s a very different process.

In America you can job hunt at any time of year, and it usually involves printing out (or even e-mailing) a copy of your resume, writing a cover letter, and sending in your application. However, if you’re a college student here in Japan, you have to secure a job BEFORE you graduate.

First of all, you have to write out your resume by hand on a specially-formatted paper that you get from your school, in pen with absolutely no mistakes and no white-out, each time you apply to a company. (Thankfully, being in the web industry, some of the places I’ve applied to are okay with you typing your information into their online form instead of having to hand-write a resume).

Here are some of my resumes in progress:

Once you have your beautifully written resume, you put on your very-dark-gray-but-not-pure-black suit (and 3 to 5 cm heels if you are female) and attend company setsumeikai (説明会), which are like information sessions in which the companies tell you about the work they do, their philosophy, etc. (I'm in a creative field so it doesn’t matter, but in marketing jobs or service industry jobs, you can’t have dyed hair or eyelash extensions, and you have to do a specific style of makeup) Then you turn in your hand-written resume, and if they’re interested, they’ll call you in for an interview. If you make it past the first interview, there’s usually a skills test or personality test (some of the personality tests I’ve taken have ridiculous questions, like “Do you get diarrhea often?”), a second interview, and then if you’ve made it past all of those steps and they still are interested in you, one final interview with an executive from the company. And you have to repeat this whole process for each company that you want to apply to. (Some of them also have group interviews, group work sessions, general skills tests that are like the SAT but in Japanese, etc as part of their hiring process)

And because of the very limited time period (usually from April to October of the year before you graduate) in which you can get recruited as a “newly graduating student” (新卒採用), if you miss this window and don’t get a job, some people pay to stay in college an additional year so they can try again the following year. In terms of the time frame, it’s almost more comparable to the American college search process than job hunting. And all of this happens while you’re still a student and still need to be attending classes and studying!

It’s quite different than job searching in America, so if anyone else you know in Japan says that they’re doing shuushoku katsudou, now you know what they’re going through!

And this year it’s especially tough due to the virus, since companies are having to move their info sessions and interviews online, delay them until things calm down, or are choosing not to recruit at all this year because the economy is unstable right now. 

Which brings us to our next topic:

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- CORONA -

Mabs and I doing okay here in Osaka! The virus started really spreading when we were already on spring break (so we were already staying at home most of the time) and the start of our new school year has gotten pushed back from the beginning of April to the middle of May. Thankfully our jobs were able to move things online so we’re working remotely now.

Japan finally announced at state of emergency a few weeks ago, but the government doesn’t have the authority to force people to stay home, or to force businesses to close, they can only “strongly suggest” it. So many people are still having to commute to work on the trains, and I don’t think Japan is doing enough, but it does sound like most people are starting to take things more seriously and stay home when possible.

Honestly my routine hasn’t changed all that much from my normal spring break routine. (Not stepping foot outside my apartment for like 5 days at a time isn’t uncommon at all) I stay at home almost all the time and only go grocery shopping once a week anyway, so aside from the stress of hearing the news, and having to work remotely, my daily life hasn’t changed too much. (My mom’s trip to Japan at the end of March got cancelled though, which was a real bummer, but I really hope I can have her come visit for the spring cherry blossom season someday once all of the corona stuff calms down!)

But even though school and shuushoku katsudou is temporarily on hold, I have been extremely busy lately getting ready for the...

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- DRAMA RELEASE -

So I briefly mentioned it in a previous post, but last summer I had the opportunity to act as the main character in a new digital drama series!

The director and producer are currently making the last edits to the three pilot episodes, and they’ll be released on YouTube soon!

Here’s the official trailer! (※Warning for language. And I’m sure that those of you who know me in real life will be quite surprised; this character’s personality is like the opposite of mine, lol. But that’s what acting is all about!)

Be sure to subscribe to the official channel on YouTube so you won’t miss the episodes when they come out!

I also had the opportunity to design and code the official website for the series! Go check it out here to start getting to know the story and characters!

I’ll be sure to post more about it when the episodes get released on YouTube, which should be soon!

I also finally made use of my acting salary and bought myself a PS4 and...

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- FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE -

I started writing up this section of the post, but it got too long because I have a lot to say about this wonderful game, so for now here’s a photo of Mabs and I enjoying some milkshakes before playing the game! (These pudding-flavored milkshakes from McDonalds were amazing!)

We are having a blast playing FF7R! Mabs never played the original FF7 so I’m glad we can play the remake together, and it’s been fun to see her reactions to it! I’m really happy that she’s enjoying it too!

So expect a post about FF7R in the near future! (I promise it won’t be to long before I post again this time!)

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I hope you all are staying safe and healthy during this crazy time in the world! Wash your hands, wear a mask when you must go out, STAY HOME, and definitely play FF7R if you have a PS4!

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Also if you’d like to receive updates by e-mail whenever I update this blog, be sure to sign up for my blog update mailing address by sending an e-mail to:

(You don’t have to include any message, just a blank e-mail is fine, but if you’d like to tell me who you are that would be nice!)

[shunkashuutou]

Machi Asobi 2019

MachiAsobi was during Golden Week, so back in May, and this post is way overdue, but here it is finally!

I’m so glad that Mabs and I got to go back to MachiAsobi again this Golden Week! It’s always such a great chance to see a ton of our friends in the same place.

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- Day 1 -

Golden Week is always the first week in Japan when the weather starts to get really hot, and these cosplays are probably better suited to cold weather than hot weather, but we survived Day 1 without melting!

Our friend Kyosuke took some cool photos for us! It’s fun how colorful these cosplays are!

I’m also going to leave this selfie that Mabs took here because this is such a great selfie and look at that amazing makeup and just wow this is anime boy perfection /////

(Also eyelash glue from the 100yen store is strong stuff and I highly recommend it for anyone who needs to glue anything to their face)

This is my favorite photo of me from Day 1 of MachiAsobi! You can see the little pink paw pads!

Selfies!

Selfies with friends! It was so great to see everybody again! Day 1 was relatively quiet too, so we had some time to chat with some of our friends more leisurely than we usually get to at events.

After we changed out of cosplay, we went to our favorite curry restaurant and ordered our favorite eggplant-and-bacon with our friend Beshiko! (It wouldn’t be a trip to Tokushima without eggplant-and-bacon curry at Daikichi Curry!) The owner is so nice and always remembers us, and he brought us free ice creams after we finished our food!

Beshiko is always fun to hang out with and she also does design work, so it was good to talk to her and get an idea of what things are like since Mabs and I will be working in that industry soon too.

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- Day 2 -

On day two we took out our Benmaru and Bontenmaru cosplays (Benmaru and Bontenmaru are younger versions of the famous samurai Sanada Yukimura and Date Masamune. Samurai often used different names when they were children) from Sengoku Basara: Sanada Yukimura Den!

Mabs and I have been talking about cosplaying these two since we were back in college (before they ever got official designs in the Sengoku Basara games even), and I started making this cosplay several years ago, but ended up putting it on hold after I thought I made some mistakes that would require me to buy more materials to replace some pieces. But this time I decided it was finally time to finish putting it together so I could debut it at MachiAsobi! 

And I’m so glad I did! I’m so happy with how this all turned out and I felt cool! (also it turned out that everything was fine and I didn’t have to buy anything else to finish it)

Bontenmaru has a very unique scarf with three... “legs”? Basically It’s shaped like a Y. Each scarf leg (there has to be a better word to describe that) has a dragon pattern on it, and is double-sided, so I had to paint 6 full dragons and a few partial dragons. I made a really intense stencil so that the dragons would all be consistent.

Painting took quite a bit of time, but I always find this part of the cosplay-making process (mindlessly painting things while listening to music) to be relaxing. (Also the paint is so much more shiny and gold than it looks in the photos)

I put wire in the ends of the scarf so it can wrinkle dramatically even when there’s no wind.

But that wasn’t the only complicated stencil that this project involved; I also made a stencil for the swirl design on the back of Bontenmaru’s kimono.

Some photos from modifying the hem of the hakama and sewing the gold stripes onto the arm covers.

And one of the most fun parts of this cosplay is that Bontenmaru has a giant leek for his joke weapon, so I made one!

I cut up some paper towel tubes for the base, covered them in craft foam, and then painted them with white glue and acrylic paint just like how I make armor.

This was before I put the clear spray on it, so it’s shinier now, but I like how it turned out! I made sure to roll up some craft foam to stick in the ends of the tubes so it would look like an actual leek.

Packing for events is always interesting, but this time my suitcase looked especially funny with a dog and a giant leek in it, lol. I didn’t measure my suitcase before making the leek, so thank goodness it just happened to barely fit!

We got so many cute selfies that day!

And we got some cool photos too!

The silly photos are my favorite though. There’s so much potential for cute, silly interactions with these characters!

We also ended up on TV! (for like 3 seconds) A cameraman and reporter from an otaku TV show asked us if they could take a short clip of us. I don’t have a TV at my place right now, so I didn’t get to see it on TV, but I found a YouTube link to the video through the TV show’s website! They start talking about MachiAsobi at 9:12 in the video, and you can see us (briefly) at 9:34.

We’ve already been in the newspaper here twice for cosplay, and in CosMode magazine, but now we can say that we’ve been on Japanese TV too! Lol

Friend selfies!

We had dinner at Daikichi Curry again, this time with our friend Aru! We decided to change things up and got vegetable curry this time.

And afterwards we went to a churro shop and they had cat-pawprint-shaped churros! Cute and delicious.

Another great MachiAsobi!

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MachiAsobi happens twice a year, and the second time is at the beginning of October, but I knew I was going to have a school trip to Tokyo around that time and we could only afford to go to Tokushima once this year. So I’m super glad that we were able to go in May! (It turns out that my school trip is going to be the weekend before MachiAsobi, but we’re not going to attend fall MachiAsobi so we can save money. However Osaka’s Pride parade, Rainbow Festa, is also the weekend of MachiAsobi, so we’ll be attending that this year!) (*I wrote this post last month but forgot to post it; the Tokyo trip and Rainbow Festa were good, more about that another time. Also going to a cosplay event this weekend for the first time in AGES!)

Definitely looking forward to next year’s MachiAsobi!

[shunkashuutou]

✨🌈Rainbow Makeup🌈✨

I did these colorful makeup looks for Pride Month (all the way back in JUNE) and just never got around to posting them until now, but that’s okay because it’s always time for pride! 🌈

I had a lot of fun with these! (A lot of them were much more sparkly in real life than they look in the photos too) I was pretty happy with how all of them turned out, but the one that surprised me most was the yellow. I had always blended yellow with other colors and not used it as the main color, but it looked a lot better than I expected!

Also these were not only makeup styles, but outfits too! Out of these, the blue one was the one that I didn’t expect to work out very well (so much stuff going on with the sequined shirt and the flannel and accessories), but I think it was actually a pretty cool outfit.

This was a fun way to celebrate Pride Month, and it also turned out to be a good chance to try out different makeup styles and outfit combinations! 🌈

[shunkashuutou]

Random Update Time! 2019/09/12

Hello everyone!

I’m finally on summer break FOR REAL. 100% free time, no classes, no school event preparation, no lines to memorize, and only one part time job. At least for the next week!

So it’s time to do some catching up! Here are just a few highlights from the last (very busy) semester and “summer break” up until now.

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But first! If you want to sign up for my blog update notification mailing list (get e-mail announcements when I post an update, so you don’t have to check my blog manually!) check out the info in my previous blog post!

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Back in March Mabs and I went to MachiAsobi in Tokushima for Golden Week! It was great to see some of our Shikoku friends again and we had a fun weekend! I also debuted my new Bontenmaru cosplay and Mabs and I finally got to cosplay Benmaru and Bontenmaru together! (the photo on the right)

I have a lot of photos from MachiAsobi, as well as progress photos when I was making my Bontenmaru cosplay (I painted like 10 dragons and constructed a giant leek), so I’d like to give MachiAsobi 2019 its own blog post sometime in the near future (hopefully).

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This semester was BUSY. One of my school projects was to make a website as a request from an actual company, and working on that project even included going to the store to interview employees and photograph things for the website, as well as writing all of the content for the site myself (in Japanese). That, along with working on an intense group project, and some sites I was making outside of school, kept me really busy!

There were a lot of weekends when Mabs and I were too busy to hang out very much, but here’s a particularly colorful photo from one of the Sundays when we did hang out.

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Okay, but speaking of video games I AM SO EXCITED FOR THE REMAKE OF FINAL FANTASY VII!!!!

This game means so much to me and this trailer video makes me tear up every time I watch it. I can’t wait to see all of these characters and the world of FF7 in high definition! And I love Tifa’s new redesign! (the pleated skirt!) A future cosplay plan? I think so.

I don’t have much time to play games these days but FF7R will be coming out in March right during spring break... I also don’t have a PS4 and was wondering where I was going to get the money for one before March, but since I unexpectedly got cast in that drama, I’m thinking I might put part of my acting salary aside for a PS4...

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Some pretty hydrangeas from back when it was the rainy season! I didn’t know that multiple colors of hydrangeas could grow on one plant.

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Mabs and I haven’t had much time or energy for cosplay this semester (I really miss it!) but back in June we put together some pretty cool casual Basara outfits and did a photoshoot at an event at a big park here in Osaka.

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This summer was a good time to be a Basara fan in Osaka; the new Sengoku Basara Battle Party smartphone game got released, and to celebrate they opened a Sengoku Basara cafe here in Osaka for a limited time!

They had lots of fun food and drinks (all non-alcoholic, yayyy) based on the Basara characters. Mabs and I went to the cafe three times, and once to a connected karaoke place that had a different set of Basara food and drinks.

We had a lot of fun and it was nice to meet up with Mabs after school and go to the cafe since we were often so busy on the weekends. These days we’re usually too busy/broke to really enjoy many of the events and things that come with living in a big city, so it was nice to take advantage of that for once too!

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These ice cream parfaits (mint chocolate, and chocolate & vanilla) are some of my new favorite konbini ice creams.

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Mabs and I had a nice anniversary date this year too!

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In July Mabs’ sister came to Japan to visit for about three weeks! Part of that time the two of them went to Korea and I was busy with filming, but we also had some fun days of hanging out! I really enjoyed getting to know Mabs’ sister better, and we had some fun adventures, like going to see the deer and the giant Buddha statue in Nara!

It was our first time to Nara, and I hadn’t expected to see SO MANY deer! They’re everywhere! I’ve been to Miyajima in Hiroshima, which also has deer (and where I had a sort of scary experience with a deer), but the Nara deer are much less likely to try to eat your personal belongings, and are just generally much calmer. (Unless they see that you’re holding the special “shika senbei”, or “deer crackers”, that shops sell to feed to them) They are super cute, and some will bow to you to ask for food, and some will let you pet them.

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Back to the topic of filming that drama, I had so much fun! It was definitely a tough schedule (waking up at 4am and shooting until 10pm some days) but I got to see a lot of areas of Osaka that I hadn’t been to before, acting was a fun experience, and the cast and crew were all so nice and I enjoyed hanging out with them! I've been told that it’s okay to post photos, but I’m going to hold off for now. But you’ll probably hear more about it in the future if I can share more with you. (Also that will have my real name attached to it, but I’ve never used my real name on this blog, so I’m trying to figure out how I want to navigate that.)

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My classmates and I participated in Yahoo’s “HACK U” hackathon (seriously who picked that name tho) again this year. HACK U is two weeks long, and I was busy with filming for the first week, and we had group projects and school during the second week, so we weren’t able to devote as much time to it as we did last year, but we still came up with a pretty cool project! (augmented reality t-shirts)

Here’s the livestream of the event; skip to about 1:07:00 in the video to see our presentation. I made the video explanation for how the t-shirts work. (And there’s another clip of us explaining our project at 2:47:00 in the video)

It was fun working together with my classmates on this! And honestly the free pizza is one of the best parts of HACK U, lol.

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After HACK U, there was one more week of group projects at school (the school group projects were collaborations with the upperclassmen and underclassmen, and had nothing to do with HACK U), and at the end of that week was my school’s exhibition of student works where companies come to look at the sites we made and potentially offer us internships or eventually jobs.

I worked hard to throw together a portfolio site before the exhibition, and I’m glad I did; it got great reviews from the people who looked at it! I showed my portfolio, the website I made for the company, and the LGBT-flag-themed cookie project that Mabs and I made for Pride Month. I got offered an opportunity to tour a company, and then do an internship if I decide that I’m interested (which I am, regardless of whether I think it fits me, internships are a great opportunity to get a better sense of what sort of companies are out there, and what sorts of companies I would or wouldn’t like to work at), so it was another successful exhibition!

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Until school starts up again week after next, it’s time to edit some of the cosplay photos that have been piling up on my hard drive, study for the highest level of the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (which Mabs and I will be taking in December), draft some more blog posts, spend time with Mabs, watch more of the new Fruits Basket anime (I just started watching it this week and I didn’t expect to enjoy it this much!), and just RELAX.

Hope you all are having a good week! (And don’t forget to sign up for the mailing list if you’re interested!)

[shunkashuutou]

☀️SUMMER BREAK!!!☀️ And an important blog update announcement!

Hello everyone!

Wow, I’m sorry that it’s been ages again since I updated! But it’s finally summer break!

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First of all, the announcement!

Since I don’t have as much time to update my blog as frequently lately, and I know that a lot of you check my blog though a bookmark or link, I know you’re probably getting tired of checking my blog and not seeing any new content.

So I’m going to make an e-mail list and send out a message whenever my blog updates! That way you will know when my blog updates without having to check it or wonder if I’m ever going to update again. (Even if I can’t post as much, I have no intention of discontinuing this blog! Although wow I really need to update my layout now that I can code better; this site is a web design nightmare)

If you’d like to be added to the blog update notification mailing list, please send an e-mail to the following address, and I’ll put you on the list!

(You don’t have to include any message, just a blank e-mail is fine, but if you’d like to tell me who you are that would be nice)

Also please do not use this e-mail address to contact me! I will only be using this address to send out blog notification updates, and will not be using it for correspondence.

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I thought that the fall semester last year was busy, and I took on fewer part-time jobs this semester, but it turned out to be an incredibly busy semester too! But I made some cool websites that I’m really proud of, and I’ve started a part-time job working at the web design company that I did an internship last summer.

Hopefully summer break will mean that I can finally post a few of the blog posts that I’ve been thinking about!

Although it looks like it will be a pretty busy summer break too. As always, my school has two-week group projects right in the middle of summer break, I'm planning on participating in Yahoo!’s Hack U hackathon with some of my classmates again, we’re supposed to be continuing to work on improving some of the sites we made this semester over summer break, and Mabs’ sister will be coming to visit Japan for a few weeks and I want to spend some time hanging out! And, very out of the blue, I got casted as the main character in the pilot of a drama series, so I’ll be doing some acting! (for the first time ever aside from cosplay stuff) I’m not sure how much I can say about that, but we’ll be filming around Osaka for 6 days this month. The rest of the cast and crew has been so nice, and I’m very excited to be able to experience what filming a drama is like!

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Hope you’re all having a good summer, sign up for the update list if you’re one of my blog readers who checks this blog through a link, and know that I plan to get at least a few things posted here over summer break!

[shunkashuutou]

✨🌈Happy Pride Month!🌈✨

June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month!

And since it’s my first year actually being fully out of the closet for Pride Month, I’ve been having fun celebrating!

Taking a break from my usual black and gray color scheme to add a bit more color into my life~

Over the last year or so, I’ve come to understand why visibility is important, and especially since there aren’t many kids at my school who are open about being gay, I’ve felt like being particularly rainbow this month.

I love how my makeup turned out that day! Super colorful makeup is so much fun!

I did different variations of rainbow makeup every day last week (I’m going to make a compilation post at the end of the month so you can see them all), and it was a great conversation starter that gave me the chance to teach some of my classmates about Pride Month. (Which is called プライド月間, *puraido gekkan*,  in Japanese, for anyone wondering) This week I’m going to do one color a day for each stripe of the rainbow.

Also one of the vending machines near my house has special sodas for Pride Month! (They had them last year too!)

This company donates to Pride parades all around Japan, and they release a special rainbow package for their Lifeguard soda every June. There aren’t many companies here in Japan that are showing their support in ways like this yet, so it made me happy to see.

Lifeguard sodas taste exactly like Smarties candies (the American type, not the chocolate type from the UK) in soda form.

Mabs and I also have a special package design/website project that we’re collaborating on for school this month. More about that in a future post too!

Happy Pride Month to any rainbow tomodachis reading this!

[shunkashuutou]

🌸Sakura Season 2019!🌸

Oh my gosh, I edited the photos for this post right after it happened, but then I saved it in my drafts to write out another day, and somehow over a month has gone by??? I really don’t understand how time passes so quickly these days.

Anyway, here are some sakura photos from this spring! No matter how many years I live in Japan, sakura season is always such a magical time, and I can never take too many photos of the flowers! 🌸

At my part-time job I had a few absent students one day, so my boss told me I could go take a walk along the river to go look at the cherry blossoms! They were so beautiful; all the way along the whole river! I had never noticed how pretty that town is before.

I really like seeing the petals everywhere too!

That weekend, Mabs’ evening part-time job got cancelled, so we went to the Tenmabashi area to go check out the flowers, since we had heard that that was a popular spot to see them. There were so many sakura trees!

There were TONS of people having picnics! And not just like sandwiches-in-a-picnic-basket sort of picnics, some people had brought tables and chairs and gas hot plates, and were cooking all kinds of things! There were also a bunch of food stands. 

I think this is my favorite sakura photo of 2019. They look so nice with the water in the background like that!

The next day, Mabs and I got dressed up and went on a hanami (flower viewing) picnic date at Osaka Castle!

The weather was so hot and sunny! I got a suntan on only the inside of my left thigh, because I was sitting like in this photo lol.

Fashion check!

Mabs’ outfit was super cool!

After that, we did a little shopping in Nipponbashi and then got donuts at Mister Donut on the way home. I got a sakura honey old fashioned donut (so pink!) and a matcha pon-de-ring.

Hope you all have a good week! 🌸 This will be my second week back at school after the Golden Week break. Hopefully I can get an update about Golden Week posted in the near future!

[shunkashuutou]

Fall Semester 2018-19 A lot of catching up to do!

Surprise!

I told you I hadn’t given up on blogging!

Wow, last semester was CRAZY. Like I honestly had never been so busy before; but I survived! And I’ve cut back to just 2 part time jobs this semester, both of which I’m used to now, so it should be a little less hectic than last semester and I’ll have more time to focus on school (and hopefully a little more free time too).

Obviously so much has happened that there’s no way I can catch you up on everything, but here are a few highlights from the last 6 months!

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October Machi Asobi!

Mabs and I went to Machi Asobi in Tokushima last October! (We always go to the Machi Asobi over Golden Week in May, but this was my first time going to the one that’s in October) We debuted our Little Witch Academia cosplays of Lotte and Sucy, and it was a lot of fun! These cosplays were a collaboration; Mabs made the dresses and I made the hats and wands. It was actually the first time we’ve worked together on a cosplay like that, and it was fun!

And we ended up in CosMode magazine! A dream come true!

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YuYuYu Only in Kanonji!

In November we went back to Kagawa Prefecture for the Yuki Yuna Wa Yuusha De Aru only event!

We cosplayed Yuna and Togo of course, but this time we tabled and sold a variety of handmade goods! Mabs and I used to table and sell Touken Ranbu stuff at the OdeRai event in Takamatsu, but I always felt a little intimidated because there was already so much awesome Touken Ranbu stuff there. But with YuYuYu, I felt like the expectations were lower since it’s a pretty small fandom, so I actually had a lot of fun making things and selling them! My keychains didn’t sell very well (I still have a bunch that need homes; I should look into selling them online or something) but my stickers of Gyuuki attempting to eat all of the other fairies sold amazingly well, and I actually ran out before the event was over! (Mabs made a ton of keychains and even a really cute button, but I couldn’t find photos at the moment.)

We each made enough to cover our travel expenses, so that was great!

We stayed in Kanonji that night (at our old apartment, since the teacher who works there now was kind enough to let us stay there. It was really weird to go back to it) and the next day we went hiking up to Takaya Jinja, which is a shrine on the very top of that mountain.

It was a really tough hike; definitely the most intense hiking I’ve ever done, and if it had been any more difficult, I don’t think I would have made it. But the weather was perfect and we got to the top! The view is beautiful up there! It was totally worth it! Another good Kanonji memory with Mabs.

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Kaiyukan Christmas Date!

For an early Christmas present, Mabs surprised me with tickets to the Kaiyukan aquarium!! I’d been wanting to go back ever since we first went a couple years ago, so it was the perfect present for me!

It was such a happy day!

They have not one but TWO whale sharks now!

And they were having a special illumination since it was winter! Kaiyukan looked so pretty with all of the lights and the giant light-up whale shark!

We rode the ferris wheel too of course!

Here’s my photo collage for the day! (They even had a diver dressed as Santa swim around the big tank and wave to everyone since it was around Christmas time)

It was really wonderful, I was so, so happy. ;U;

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Hawaii!

As soon as it was winter break, I went to Hawaii to spend Christmas and New Year’s with my family! (Mabs went back to visit her family too) It was so good to see everyone again, and it was actually the first time I’d ever spent Christmas in Hawaii. (My cousin’s new puppy is really cute!)

A few selfies with flowers

My mom took me to get my nails done as a Christmas present, and I had a lot of fun having my nails be all colorful.

My mom also did a kiwame Ookurikara photoshoot for me at the beach! We got some really cool pictures, and it was great to finally take kiwame Kara-chan out for a proper photoshoot. (Even though I’d made him like a year before, I had only taken him to events)

I finally got some kiwame sunglasses photos!

We saw this super cool art installation with hundreds of light-up flowers that changed colors to match the music that was playing. It was so pretty!

I could have stayed there and watched all night. I love big installations like this.

I’m so glad I got to spend time with the fam, and enjoy the warm Hawaii weather! (I went to the beach a lot too, but of course I don’t have photos from that because I was too busy playing around in the water)

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Matsumoto with Hala and Hana!

In January we went to Matsumoto to visit our friends Hala and Hana! They’re sisters from Australia, and we’ve been internet friends for years now. (thank you Sengoku Basara) Hala was doing an exchange program in Matsumoto and Hana came to visit her, and I’m so glad we finally got to hang out all together!

Also you may remember, but Matsumoto is where Mabs lived for a year right after we graduated from college, so I’d been there to visit several times before. It was great to go back again! Matsumoto Castle is so pretty with its big moat.

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Valentine’s Day!

For Valentine’s Day, Mabs and I got McDonalds and drew hearts with ketchup, since that’s what we did last year too, LOL. We’re going to make it a tradition. So romantic~ ahaha

I wanted to give Mabs one of those rainbow roses I kept seeing around last summer because they’re pretty and also kind of gay, but the only ones I could find in February were fake ones made out of soap and they were expensive, so I made one myself out of some cardstock, lol.

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My birthday!

I had a fun birthday! Of course I wanted to do something different than usual for birthday makeup, but I wasn’t sure what color to go with, so I just used all of them lol.

I liked how it turned out! I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Violet Voss Fruit Sorbet eyeshadow palette that I very spontaneously threw in my shopping basket when I was at Sephora in Hawaii, lol.

After I finished school that day, I went over to Mabs’ place for a birthday dinner. We made ratatouille and then she gave me the cutest cake ever...

A whale shark cheesecake!!

Look at how she decorated it! And the white chocolate fins and tail, and even the little waves on the plate! It was almost too cute to eat, but it was also really delicious cheesecake!

And she got me a whale shark blanket! it’s like a big pocket for your feet, and it’s been so great for keeping my feet warm on chilly winter days! So cute, and a great addition to my growing collection of whale shark stuff!

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Hanging out with Mabs!

Even though it was a super busy semester, Mabs and I hung out for at least a little while almost every weekend.

Because we have less money for adventures these days; we’ve been doing more walking and just exploring the areas we can get to on foot. These photos are from the day that we just happened to stumble upon the shrine to Sanada Yukimura that we went to three years ago! It was closer to her apartment than we thought!

We just have a lot of fun together. <3

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Aaaaaaaaaaa

And despite all of the craziness of last semester (I never want to have 4 part-time jobs at the same time ever again), I still managed to keep my grades up!

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New cosplay!

Over spring break I sewed a dog!

The little paw pads took forever but I’m so happy with how it all turned out!

It was for a new cosplay of course!

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Agi’s visit!

And a few weeks ago, our friend Agi came to visit us for a while, and we did a photoshoot all together! We finally got to check out the cosplay studio here in Osaka, and it’s so awesome! It has a ton of different sets, the tickets are fairly cheap, and it even has a cafe inside so you can order food! (cosplay takes energy so food is important!)

It was so much fun taking photos all together! Mabs and Agi were so perfect as their characters!

And of course, while Agi was here, we took him on the usual Osaka sightseeing tour (Osaka castle, anime shopping in Nipponbashi, Namba/Shinsaibashi, Amemura) plus Fushimi-Inari in Kyoto since Agi loves foxes.

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Nagoya!

And then right after Agi left, I went on a 3-day class trip to Nagoya! We worked together with students from a computer school in Nagoya in small groups (4 people per team, with a mix of students from the different schools) to come up with an idea based on a certain theme and make a website or app in just 3 days. Working with the Nagoya students was a little tough, but it was a good experience. Hanging out with my classmates was by far the best part of the trip though! I have some fun photos, but I would need to ask my classmates’ permission before posting them, so instead here’s a photo of Nagoya’s famous miso katsu. (Just what it sounds like; pork katsu with miso sauce)

One of Nagoya’s special omiyage are these frog manjyuu!

Their faces are so derpy and hilarious. Of course I had to bring some back for Mabs.

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Sakura Season!

And now its cherry blossom season here!

This is my last week of spring break, and I’ve finally had some totally free time! (after spring break started, we had a two-week special course at school, I learned how to pay my taxes in Japan, one of our college friends came to visit, I did an internship at another design company, Agi came to visit, and I went to Nagoya. After all of that I was feeling like I needed a spring break from spring break!) It’s been so good to get back to my hobbies again, and I’ve been going on walks every day and looking at the sakura!

This weekend Mabs and I are going to go on a hanami (flower viewing) date and check out the sakura somewhere here in Osaka. I’m really excited!

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And school starts on Monday! Going to do my best to make it another productive and fun school year!

I definitely want to keep updating this blog more regularly again, even if the posts have to be shorter than they used to be, so stay tuned for more from me, and I hope you all are having a nice spring! 🌸

[shunkashuutou]

Music Recommendations Late 2018: An Unusual Mix of Stuff

Hey everyone!

WOW this semester has been busy!

Not only have classes been a little more intense than they were the first semester, but more than anything, I’ve taken on more part-time work than I can handle. I teach a business English class every Wednesday, and then on Fridays and Saturdays I work at two small English conversation schools (similar to my job when I was in Shikoku) that are each in different cities an hour train ride away from my side of Osaka. (And I’m still working in the game room at my school on lunchbreaks twice a week, if you can count talking to people in English while they play video games as a job) Super excited to quit my Saturday job at the end of January, but for now I’m doing my best! And I’ve definitely learned some things from my misadventures at these part-time jobs.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to share some of the music I’ve been listening to lately, so here’s a music recommendations post!

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Hotto Dogu song ft. Google Translate - heiakim

This song was posted online last year, but the Japanese side of the internet just recently discovered it, and now it’s stuck in everyone’s heads.  I love how this guy made this song with Google Translate, and it’s so ridiculously catchy! (Maybe it’s a sign of how much I’m losing my mind this semester, but I catch myself singing this out loud all the time when I’m home alone.)

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OTTER POP (ft. Hollis) - Shawn Wasabi

Shawn Wasabi makes cute, happy-sounding songs and names them all after food! They’re good for when you want some upbeat electronic music to listen to, and it’s really cool to watch how he plays music on his button pad. I recommend all of his music, but I feel like I end up listening to “i lost all my eggs” and “BURNT RICE” a lot.

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“Excuse me, why are you so cute?“ LoFi playlist

This playlist of chill LoFi music has been my default study music since the end of last semester. It’s easy to listen to and not distracting, but also cheerful. (In college I used to listen to Japanese music while studying, but it’s either gotten more distracting because my Japanese comprehension level has increased, or my attention span has decreased lol)

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Ghosts - Mike Shinoda

I’ve been listening to “Ghosts” by Mike Shinoda (the rapper/graphic designer for Linkin Park) quite a bit ever since it came out this summer. Not only is it catchy song, but I’ve always liked this guy’s art and it’s just a fun video.

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忘却のセイント - +A

And of course no music recommendation list of mine would be complete without at least one visual kei song!

This one is by a new duo called +A that is made up of violinist Ayasa and the fabulous Akira. Akira is one of the few female visual kei fashion models and singers out there, and I’ve always liked her style and her message of being yourself and wearing whatever you want regardless of gender. Most of her music was region locked on YouTube when I lived in America, so once I stopped buying as many fashion magazines, I kind of forgot about her, but I’m glad that I was recently reminded that she exists and looked her up again! She sounds better than ever, and it’s also nice to see Mejibray’s former guitarist MiA working on songs like this these days.

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I still have hope that I’ll catch you guys up on all of the other things that have been going on over here for the last few months, but the first priority right now is sleeping enough and taking care of myself, and of course SCHOOL!

Hope you all have a good week!

[shunkashuutou]

✨🎃 Halloween 2018! 👻✨

✧*｡ Happy Halloween! ✧*｡

Last Friday was my school’s Halloween event, and I went as a dragon! 🐲 

I got the idea because I’ve been wanting a reason to try making horns, and because my h.NAOTO “dragon leather” vest and pants are some of the most Halloween-ish pieces of clothing I own and I always want more chances to wear them. And last year I put together a cute costume, so this year I wanted to do something a little more ~spooky~

I was really happy with how my makeup turned out! I’ve always wanted to try doing scale makeup! To achieve the scale effect, you just pull a wig net down over your face, and apply makeup (or in this case, hair chalk, since it was darker than the green eyeshadow I had) over the top of the net. So easy and it looks super cool! I was also really surprised how nice and bright this green mascara from the 100 yen shop was!

And I’m so glad that I finally got a chance to try out this method of making horns! One of our friends who came to our Halloween party two years ago had horns that she had made like this, and I’ve also seen a couple tutorials floating around online.

So what are they made out of? Toilet paper and a paper bag!

First you cut a piece of a paper bag an crumple it up into a horn shape, and then you wrap it in toilet paper. (getting two vaguely symmetrical horns is by far the hardest part of this process)

Next, you wrap some wire around the horn in a spiral, and use it to connect the horn to a plastic headband. Then wrap the horn with some more toilet paper (I used a little glue here and there to secure the ends of the strips of toilet paper), and put a few coats of paint on it! Super easy and cheap!

I got to school early on Friday morning so I could put on my horns and stuff (obviously I couldn’t wear those on the train!) and take a few selfies before class. My photography teacher from last semester happened to walk by, so I chatted with him for a bit (he’s actually from the makeup/beauty college next to my school so he always tells me that I should drop out of computer school and enroll in his school’s special effects makeup course instead, LOL) and he told me he would buy me whatever I wanted out of the vending machine as a reward for having put so much effort into my costume!

It was fun surprising my teachers and classmates, and being way taller than a lot of them with my 15cm heels, lol.

After class, my classmate Fujita took some photos for me with my nice camera!

There was also a costume contest, but the student staff running the event just took photos of everyone’s costumes, and they’ll announce the winners on actual Halloween. (tomorrow!)

It’s been super busy and crazy lately, but I’m glad that I got to take a little time to dress up!

Also wow I’ve come a long way since the last time I was a dragon for Halloween, LOL!

Hope you all have a fun and spooky Halloween and get to eat lots of treats!

✨🎃 🍬 👻 🍭💀🌙🐲✨

[shunkashuutou]

Eggplant Recipes!

This summer I FINALLY got a toaster oven!! It’s red and super cute, and it’s so nice to be able to make toast and the other half of my repertoire of recipes again!

Here are two of my favorite meals to make with the toaster oven!  

-----  -----  -----  Eggplant & Cheese Sandwiches  -----  -----  ----- 

Mabs sent me this recipe, and it looked so good that I couldn’t wait to try it out! This recipe is from @syunkon0507 on twitter, and I’m glad that I can translate it into English so that more people can try it out!

It says:  “For people who like eggplant and bread...  【Crisply on the outside and gooey on the inside! Eggplant & Cheese Sandwiches】”

Here are all of the ingredients you’ll need: Bread, salt, oil, one eggplant, “bacon” (pre-cooked ham), cheese, mayonnaise (which I forgot to put in the photo), and ketchup (optional)

Cut the eggplant into thin slices, and sprinkle a little salt on the slices. Put them on some kind of microwavable dish/plate, and pour a small amount of oil over them. Cover loosely with plastic wrap. (Japan sure loves to microwave plastic) Microwave for 2 minutes until soft.

Put the eggplant on the bread along with mayonnaise, ham, and cheese. If you want to, you can put a little ketchup on for extra flavor.

Toast in the toaster oven!

And enjoy! This is definitely my new favorite sandwich!

Special Tip! If you live in Japan, making “fancy” sandwiches is a great way to get people to think you’re an amazing cook, LOL. (Even when I made a plain ham sandwich with the usual lettuce/tomato/cheese/mayo, my classmates were like “Wow! Where did you buy that?!”)

-----  -----  -----  Eggplant & Chicken Donburi   -----  -----  -----

Mabs learned this recipe from one of the adult students we used to teach in Shikoku, and it’s the easiest recipe I know, and one of my favorites.

All you need is oil, white miso (the lighter-colored the better), one eggplant per serving, and one piece of chicken breast per serving. Only 4 ingredients!

Cut the eggplant into long strips, grease the pan with oil, and put the eggplant slices in.

Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces and layer them on top of the eggplant.

Spread some miso over the chicken and eggplant. Try to make sure that each piece gets some miso! If you’re not sure how much miso to use, think about the quantity of miso that comes in those instant miso soup packets, and use about 1.5 to 2 times that amount per serving.

Bake it in the oven at 350 F (175 C) until the chicken is cooked. I usually put it in for like 7-10 minutes, check on it, and then put it in for another 7-10 or so. If you want the miso to be more evenly distributed, you can stir it around when you check on it, but if you want the miso to get a bit crispy, don’t stir it. (here it may have gotten a little too crispy, still getting used to the settings on my toaster oven)

Serve it over rice for a super easy and delicious meal!

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Once again I’ve been falling a bit behind on blog posting, but I have a few more posts in the works! Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

[shunkashuutou]

✧･ﾟ:*Happy News*:･ﾟ✧

Hello everyone! It’s time for a life update because I have some happy news to share with you all! Mabs and I are dating! ✧(  ु•⌄• )◞ ♡ ◟( •⌄• ू )✧

It’s actually been over a year now since we decided to make it official, and quite a bit longer than that in total, ahaha.

Mabs has been a wonderful girlfriend and I’m very happy! (Look at her cute stressed-but-happy surprised face in this photo, lol)

Can’t wait to continue to show you all of our fun adventures together!