New Year

For me it's not only the start of a new year but also my birthday. I've been thinking a lot about the past and also how I want to proceed in the next year as a 21-year-old. So much has changed in this past year it gives me a lot to think about.

This time last year I looked like this:

During 2010 I have started a relationship, finished my 2nd year at university, moved country, begun studying in Japan and had quite a style makeover. Of course the biggest change is moving to Japan. It has made me grow up more than simply moving to London did, it's highlighted a lot of issues I need to work on in regards to Japanese and being here has really made me more concious of my style. 

Right now I look like this:

It's been really useful being here where I can visit my favourite brands so often and pick up gal magazines whenever I want. At first I really wasn't sure where I was going style-wise but now I'm so much more focussed on how I want to look. I hope into 2012 I can keep getting more confident in this respect.

That brings me to my resolutions:

1: Be more focussed on studying

I've always worked quite hard but lately I've noticed a lot of weak points with my studying I need to work on. By putting in more effort I hope I can fix these and work towards my goal of fluency in Japanese and confidence using it with both native speakers and other learners a like.

2: Lose weight

I've gained some weight I'd rather lose over that last year and I would like to lose it. I also want to get fitter in general because I feel so unfit and that's so not sexy. I'm pretty good at eating clean when I can be bothered but I get lazy when it comes to exercise so I'm going to try and work harder in that respect.

3: Be more organised

This applies to various things, from tidying my room regularly to keeping in better contact with my family. I need to be more proactive and organised in so many aspects. This includes thinking about my future. In September I start my final year of uni and I really need to think harder about what I want to do with my life after studenthood.

4. Improve style

I already mentioned how I feel like I'm doing better with my style. I want to continue this and most of all, not go back to how I was before once I get back to London. Confidence is a big part of looking good and I want to maintain the confidence I've gain so far. My make-up still needs work and I want to be able to put together better co-ordinates with the clothes I have.

Shibuya is where it's at

I'm getting so behind with blog posts because so much has been happening lately what with everyone coming to Tokyo for the holidays. I mentioned in my last blog post I was going to go to the Royz live. It was a really good night out and for an indies band they put on a great show. I will shamelessly fan-girl them from now on.

 After the gig we went to take purikura and then went to our beloved Denny's. I've been there twice in the past two weeks. In fact I've been eating out a lot lately, but it's been worth it. I've been having a lot of fun too. And I'm never going to say no to deserts. ^^

Christmas Eve in Japan in basically a date day. Since I'm doing the long distance thing atm I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. Alice was sleeping in because she works nights at a karaoke place so me and Chriss went off to 109. We saw a few other groups of girls having a girly day too so it seems we weren't the only ones not on the romantic bandwagon.

After chatting with the shop staff and picking up some stuff at D.I.A and Mars (me) and CoLu and MarpleQ

 (Chriss) we decided to get something to eat. We went to my favourite Omurice place in Shibuya (they do even better deserts than Denny's). In the end I guess it did sort of end up being like a date lol

It was so good. Then when we got back home Alice was up and she wanted to go out. We dressed up and had what she named "HO HO HO Merry Christmas". I don't think I've ever been such a tramp ever >.< I wore my new Real Mars dress so I was feeling pretty awesome and then we went to Shinjuku at around midnight. First stop was Donki to get boot covers (because my legs were freezing) and then we went off to my favourite izakaya. We had 2 hours all-you-can-drink and actually went for it this time so we came out pretty wasted. Then we went for karaoke (and tried badly to explain how Alice works there in order to get staff discount. We failed unsurprisingly). For some reason after that we still hung out, still drinking at like...7am at this point? We eventually headed home which took far longer than it should have. In the morning me and Alice had to go and get KFC for Christmas dinner, still pretty wasted >.<  A very merry Christmas all around I'd say.

Royz

Me and Chriss were saying how we really wanted to see some bands while she was here. We spent a while looking for who's playing atm and actually has tickets available (most Christmas and New Year stuff is sold out) and we found out that Royz are playing tomorrow. This is awesome because they're one of the bands we both really wanted to see so we're going tomorrow.

This also means I'm going to have to take a crash course in their furi. I can usually pick it up quite quickly but I have like...no time to learn this time. It doesn't help that the guides I'm going from are crazy. Oh Royz I love you.

1,2 Agehoes

I posted a pic yesterday on Facebook of me and Chriss twinning. Well you can work out what that means, CHRISS IS IN TOKYO!! Yay I am re-united with one of my agehoes. She's visiting for a few weeks and staying in the same place as me so super convenient for fun times ^^

We then went off with Alice on various errands to ensure we have cake and KFC in time for Christmas. Or should I say Chriss-mas? I'm really happy we managed to order the KFC in time. It's not as good as being with your family I guess but it's still fun doing Christmas the Japanese way. After our errands in Shinjuku (and some flapping about and taking puri in Kabukicho) we went off to Harajuku.

In Harajuku we looked around a few shops and went to Tenya for some tempura-don because we were epic hungry and I realised I hadn't eaten tempura at all since I'd got to Japan which is a travesty since it's super yummy. After that we went for crepes because you can't go to Harajuku and not eat crepes. Believe me I've tried.

The sign next to the crepe shop.

Our crepes. I had double chocolate and banana and Alice and Chriss had double chocolate and strawberry. Mmm fruit.

And finally this is my eye make-up at the moment. I've been playing around with it a bit and have gone back to glitter under the eyes because it helps with the darker shadows and thicker liner I've been using lately. The top lashes are Candy Style (cute) and the bottom lashes are Diamond Lashes (charming eye).

I can't wait until everyone else gets here for the winter holidays. When Emmie gets here the Agehoes will all be assembled and armed to take over....

Muzak

BEST SONG EVARRR. Been blasting it non stop.

Alongside Kyary's latest single. Not as good as PON PON PON but you've gotta applaude the eyelash queen for another crazy pv

New Jeans

My mum sent on the jeans I ordered!�

I've wanted these since Unni visited and brought Emmie's pair.

She couldn't get me any when she returned but randomly while we were on msn together we sawthem on Nelly.com.

I had to have them sent home first!and my mum wasn't too impressed (she didn't like my extensions either lol!)

I'm now so ready for ageho skank day in the land of the rising sun.�

Lashtastic : Candy Style

When I got here I was in desperate need of new lashes, the ones I'd been using were pretty much trashed. I was all set to buy some Diamond Lashes or Dolly Wink but as I was in Donki I saw loads of lashes for like, 107 yen in various styles. I never bought cheap lashes in the UK because they looked so fake and didn;t come in the styles I wanted. However these Candy Style lashes were all designed for gal make-up and didn't seem too awful.

The lashes don't come with glue but I never use the glue that comes with lashes anyway, I use D.U.P Lash Fixer EX. They aren't the best quality lashes I've ever had, but because they're so cheap I don't mind wearing them all the time and basically trashing them. It also means I can try out different styles without investing too much. I mean who wants 4 pairs of eyelashes that don't actually suit you?

And I'm not the only one wearing them. I knew the packaging looked familiar when I saw them in the shop so I flicked back through some of my gal mags and sure enough the reader models are using them too.

• Kanako uses the Baby top lashes.
• Rina uses the Baby and Natural top lashes and the Racoon bottom lashes.
• Minyatocchi also uses the Baby top lashes.
• Nemoyayo uses the Bapion and Racoon lashes.

So if you're around a Donki I recommend giving some of these a try. I mean what does it cost you?

Style Inspirations : RihoKate

RihoKate (リホケイト）is an egg reader model and the first in my series of blog posts about my style inspirations. I think I first really remember her from last February's valentine's section where I thought she just looked awful. I remember making fun of her with Unni. I'll be honest, I still don't like how she does her makeup but she is also at the moment one of my favourite gal models.

RihoKate model for my beloved JSG for their A/W collection. I like her style and the way she puts her co-ordinates together. I think everything she wears screams gal, even if you take away her make-up and her hair. I like that she takes risks with gal.

This November's issue of egg had the theme of "grrrls message from the street". I think this is them trying to breathe some fire back into gal tbh but I really enjoyed RihoKate's sections because she has such a good attitude to her fashion. It made me respect her so much more and I understand some of her more out there choices now (such as her hair in that issue, it's like when I had crochet braids but worse >.<)

Her general stance on fashion, and life basically is : "I look the way I like because I like it. It my life so I can't spend it worrying about what you think of me" (not a direct translation just summing up) I find it so refreshing in a land of girls that all want to look just like Nishino Kana because it's pretty much socially acceptable and it means boys will like them. When I first got into gal it was at the height of haaaaardy (if anyone even remembers that) and Kaoru was queen. At that time I hadn't started dressing gal really but I really liked the whole atmosphere around the style. It was young and rebellious and bright. Now it's all pastels and no edge which bores me almost to tears so seeing that gals like Riho still exist is like a breath of fresh air. Yay for gals that don't give a shit! More of these please!

Me vs. Japan : Recycling

Yeah it's that time again for another rant from me about Japan. Mostly I like it here but there are some things that do kinda piss me off. Today's rant is about recycling in Japan.

This is the crazy amount of rules we were given in our place for disposing of our rubbish. First off we got the 8 page document but after some complaints we were given the sheet. That was kinda good since half the dates on the original document were wrong so no wonder we were putting things out on the wrong day.

Now I don't mind recycling, even if it gross. If there's a little thing I can do to make a difference in the long run then fine I don't mind. I spent all of last year separating my food waste leading to a number of what I can only describe as the rankest experiences of my life. My issues with it in Japan are many layered. The first layer of which are public bins that seem like they are separated but in fact are NOT. Wtf why would you bother pretending to be sorting properly when your aren't? I also don't like the double standard in our neighbourhood. A lot of people complain about how we do things because we're the 'gaijin house' but tbh we're just following the same rules as them. We got complaints about putting the rubbish out the night before....I've seen my neighbours put there's out at noon the day before. Gah!

Also, I swear they don't even care that much about the environment. What I mean by that is, for all the recycling they still produce a shit load of packaging for no apparent reason. Take these make-up wipes as an example...why the double packaging? And everything comes like this. You get chocolate on a cardboard tray inside of a plastic wrapper inside of a cardboard box. It's so stupid I can't even.

(This rant is mainly due to it being my day to do the rubbish ¬¬ lol. More actually fun/interesting posts to come I promise)

DINO

I finally bought the dino sweater I've been coveting. It's silly how happy wearing this makes me. Now me and the gang are off to all night karaoke!�

Boo!

So yeah, it was Halloween yesterday. On the Saturday I had a party at work which was fun but also technically work so I couldn't have fun like usual. I didn't actually go clubbing for Halloween because well...I didn't have anyone to go with but I did prance around Harajuku with my friends and take purikura. Our adventures included being nampa-ed (then being rescued by the guy's friend since even he thought we were too young), looking at some stray kittens frolicking and getting our picture taken by an old Japanese couple.

I like how in purikura in Japan there's a seasonal section so you could make everything Halloween themed. Hope you guys all had a good time this year!

Review : King Grey lenses

I got so lazy with blogging. It's really bad but so much stuff happens and then I have to do homework or go to uni so I rarely have a load of time to sit at my computer and edit a post. I got these lenses ages ago from PinkyParadise (link in the sidebar) again. They have really quick service and are generally pretty good so I recommend them to anyone. This time they sent me the elephant lense case wich made me pretty since they're my favourite animal だ象。。。lame joke forgive me >.<

I look a bit stoned in all the pics with flash, sorry. My eyes are kinda light sensitive. Now I'm gonna be honest and say these are my favourite pair of lenses I own. They have enough pigment to cover my dark eyes, they stand out without being hyper sized and suit my look more when I wanna be more ハデ(hade). I love the thick black ring too, though I know some people don't.

Overall:

• Enlargement: ★★★★☆They aren't super huge but they do make an obvious difference size-wise imo.
• Comfort: ★★★★☆
  Even though these aren't made by GEO who are famed for their comfort I think these feel just as fine as my other lenses.
• Colour/Design ★★★★★
  LOVE LOVE LOVE. They look light grey and stand out a lot sometimes but can also look dark grey in some lights which is nice too. I like the thick black outer band also.

Peace out guys! I'll try to update more regularly from now on. I do have stuff waiting, just needs editing. xx

PS: Yeah, the ends of my hair are purple. More on that later 

Gal* Ten

Now it's been around for awhile so I'm sure some people will already know about it but Gal*Ten (or ギャルトーク天国 in Japanese) is what I wanna blog about today. As the name suggests it's just a bunch of gals sat around chatting for a bit over an hour but it's really entertaining. It's a live online show from TBS so if you tweet them during the show they might read it out. I like it because it helps me get used to more casual Japanese and I think the best thing to keep up your interest in studying Japanese is to base it around things you're interested in. It airs at 8pm on Tuesdays Japanese time. You don't have to worry if that is at some ridiculous time in your time zone, you can re-watch it whenever you like on the tbs gal-ten website.


Now for the cast:


Hiromi Imaizumi ( Hi-bou) 

She models for Edge Style and favours a more adult look. She's quite funny on the show too.
BLOG


Kanako Kawabata

Everyone's favourite egg model Kanako is on this show. She kinda makes the show to be honest because she has such a fun personality
BLOG



Rui Kotobuki

Popteen model. She's very cute and lovely, but kinda quiet in the show.
BLOG


Aya Suzuki

My original favourite gal model ever. She models for Ranzuki and has really nice style. You should check out her blog. She's very good friends with Kanako and Romihi.
BLOG


Romihi

Romihi of GLIA and egg fame. No surprises that she's on the cast too since both Kanako and Aya are. They have a really good relationship together which makes it fun to watch. They're also all under the same entertainment company.
BLOG


Tenchimu

OMG I love her! I don't know how popular or well known she is with western gyaru since I guess she's more of a talent. I see her on a few shows here in Japan and she models in Nicky too. Along with Kanako she brings the fun to gal-ten.
BLOG


Akohina

Ako is one of the most adorable gyaru mamas. Three kids and still so glam. She's super cute and sometimes her daughter is on the show. Her style is always fabulous and she's kinda quiet on the show.
BLOG

They also have a TBS announcer (Nagisa Satou in case you're interested) who basically babysits the gals. Her and Aya usually do the presenting.

The show is a bit different every time but the basic format has them starting with a bit of chatting and showing what gifts they have to give away to a viewer that tweets them. Recently they've started plugging the theme song for the show (you need to use TBS's phone website to download it) at the start too. They move on to outfit run downs which is the best bit for me. Once the models are out of their magazines you get to see their normal style and where they personally shop at. I love Romihi's style on down days and Aya always looks really cute. It also goes to prove that even the models don't look like models every day. They also take some time at the end usually to talk about advertise something they've been interested in lately. The links to all the products later go up on the website. There is at least one guest every week, usually two which helps keeps the show interesting each week. They also throw in new segments. Last week was a truth game to do with relationships. Kinda brings it home how young some of these gals are when they say they've not had their first kiss yet.

I guess if you can't understand Japanese this show might be kinda boring for you. You can still enjoy the outfit run downs though but I think a lot of the actual fun of the show would be lost. If you are studying Japanese or understand it though I really recommend this as part of your weekly routine. ^^

New 109 stores

Now as I'm sure a lot of people know from Mitsu blog post here there's been huge turnover in the shops in 109. I went last Saturday when most of the new stores opened up and since I figured people might be interested I thought I'd blog about it.

Now most of the new stores are on the upper floors. The first I went into was Pinza on the 6th floor opposite Ank Rouge. It's not my style at all and I just went in to check it out while my friend was trying on stuff in Ank Rouge. While I was in there there was some guy in a Lolita dress who was getting a lot of staff attention. He was the only other person in there. Wow, sucks to be Pinza. I didn't feel too bad for them though because one of the shop staff gave me a dirty look when she saw I was wearing trainers ¬¬ In an empty shop don't try to be picky about customers lady! The cloths were nice, very cute and ladylike but nothing to scream and shout about.

Ungrid on the 7th floor, unlike Pinza was PACKED with people. It's a smaller shop but still, it was full. I wondered why and then I realised a lot of people had come to see the model that had turned up. I was literally forced around the shop by the  movement of people in there and I couldn't look at anything really so I went back later for a better look. I like most of the stuff, especially the burgundy jumper you can see in the picture above. The layout is actually alright as well when there are less people about.

moohoop was my first stop on the 8th floor and the store I was most interested in looking at. It's crazy small and quite a few people were in there looking about but I could still look at everything without feeling too swamped. I like the stuff they have in but it has a different feel to the rest of 109. I like that the clothes are cheap and the shop staff are friendly but I also had a bit of a jumble sale feel to it. It's currently on the list of models such as Suzuki Aya and Kanako though and is definitely worth a look at. I really want the dolman sleeved batman hoody. Super cute

GYDA is nice but so expensive. I saw a few things I liked such as the shoes you can see in the pic and some other bits and pieces but things would have to just be more spectacular for me to pay what they want for it. They were selling a set which included leggings, a t-shirt and fluffy waist coat for like 80 quid or so? They must be on crack. But I think that about a lot of pricing in 109. How does it cost so much? It's not made that well and I hope the corridor of space they have in 109 isn't raising the costs that badly.

When I first went Repipi Armanio was full of children so I didn't even go in. Then when I went back later in the day (yeah I went to 109 twice in one day) my friend dragged me in to look at thier fluffy back packs with ears. It's a really sweet shop and the prices are low but...it's for kids tbh. Some of the stuff could work into other outfits but I couldn't see it ever being a shop someone almost exclusively buys from. I mean it's the kinda AmeKaji style of CoLu or w♥c but somehow just doesn't have a grown-up element to it at all.

So there we go, all the shops I went to that day. I went into Garula too and again like a lot of stuff there but would not pay that much for booty shorts. That 16-year-old is crazy. Where do these gals get their money from? My favourite atm is moohoop.