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.
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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
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Rui Kotobuki

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

Me vs Japan : Summer

Okay so there are loads of thing I love about Japan, but there are also things that annoy the hell out of me. The current bane of my daily life is Summer. Now I used to love summer, it was one of my favourite seasons back in England (maybe because of it's rarity and spontaneity ) and Japan is always banging on about it's beautiful 4 seasons (it's the only place with 4 don't you know) but yeah...it sucks.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was just hot. I love hot weather so for me daily temperatures of around 30 degrees is lovely. One of the things I used to love about summer is how everyone wears their cutest best clothes. Everyone looks better in summer. You can get out your short shorts or your cute little dresses. Yeah in Japan, you better make sure you also have a thick t-shirt under that cute dress and short short? I think you mean knee length skirt. I don't know if it's to prevent tanning or what but people wear SO MUCH clothing in summer here. It's crazy, they must be dying. The worst part is though, I have to do it too or you get both pervy guys looking at your goodies and Japanese women judging you on your darkness. Fail Japan...learn how to do summer right.

And I've not even gone into the whole humidity thing. I wish I'd just got my hair relaxed again before I came because it reverts the second I step out of the door. I get so dehydrated from sweating so much which is so gross in itself. Gah, I'm dying for autumn right now. Also for some reason everyone has decided it's Autumn now for some reason. I swear the weather is the same as when I arrived.

I ♥ Shin-Okubo

Now in my last post I made a brief mention to all the k-pop everywhere in the things that I liked and I showed a brief look at k-pop corner. Well I didn't bring any of that stuff with me. I went on a little jaunt to a place just a bit away from me called Shin-Okubo. This is the Korean area in Tokyo. It's like k-pop idol mecca. They sell so much stuff, some of it legit goods some of it made by them.

When I first stepped out of the exit to Shin-Okubo I was a bit dazed. There was a really hyped up atmosphere ( and I think it was a weekday). We could so an idol shop with cutouts of the characters from Your Beautiful and you could stick your face in her face. This drama is being remade in Japan atm do it's really popular. They also had the world of all SHINEe goods (who are also kinda everywhere since the release of Juliette and SM Town Japan). As me and my friend were making our way over we saw this huge screaming group of girls. We went up and saw it was this new k-pop boy group (S.O.S) who we're promoting a performance they were doing in Japan's Coffee Prince café. We were gonna go to it but it was 2000 yen each and we had no idea who this band was (though we did squee a little when they talked to my friend in Korean)

So after that we hit the idol shops and I went a little bit crazy. It was so much fun there becuse everyone else there were just as big crazy fan girls. I kitted out k-pop corner from there (still need to go back and get some SHINEe stuff to finish it off) and I got a pigrabbit phone charm. Since the Japanese version is airing atm most a lot of people seem to recognise it if they see me with my phone on the train. While we were wondering around we saw some girls getting interviewed which we thought might be normal for the place. Japan loves Korea and loves hating it too so they talk about it all the time on TV, we though it was for that. We ran away since we looked bad and kinda stood out as the only foreigners there that day.

 THEN we saw why the cameras were really about that day. There was another crowd of people up the street and a big blacked out people carrier. We stayed to watch and saw some women getting in to the car. My friend asked the camera man in Korean who it was and he told us it was BROWN EYED GIRLS!!! We kya'd about that for a bit but then had to run away again because the camera guy realised it was a Korean speaking foreigner and therefore must be interviewed. I've been back since (looking better in case of interview) but it's never been that hyper and eventful since. And now to k-pop corner close up:

Oh and what might be that suspicious looking Big Bang box in top of my wardrobe you wonder? Let's have a closer look....

...

BIG BANG LIGHT STICK. 

Now I can stan with the rest of the VIP's

Home sweet home

So I've kinda settled in a bit now so I figured I'd post some pics of my room. There's not much to it but hey let's face it I live in Japan so I didn't expect much lol.

Can you believe I actually had to tidy up to achieve this level of disorganisation lol. I guess I'm just one of those people who'll never be tidy.

End there's the other end of the corridor that is my room. I'm used to living in small spaces since I'm a poor student so I can make the best of this. And either way I'm in Japan which so far has softened the blows of anything Japan has so far tried to throw at me. I like the call the bit by my door and wardrobe k-pop corner.

So my favourite things so far about Tokyo are:

• all the cute shit
• the good transport
• Shibuya
• all the k-pop everywhere
• the internet
• Mos Burger
• microwaveable rice..so simple
• peach water
• Pino
• ...