Can retainers be gyaru???

I'm finally at the last stage of straightening my teeth (again!), and I got fitted for plastic wire retainers. I GOT TO CHOOSE WHAT COLOR I WANTED!!! I was excited. I chose *sparkly white* because retainers can be cute, too!

Right?

 Do you see the sparkles???

And if you don't wanna think about retainers *omg* then have a picture of Bobby (大石一聡) from PlayZ, he's easily the best of the five since he can actually sing.

I'm usually partial to the "girlier" looking models lol.

Maybe I'll put sparkly rhinestones and stuff on the case hahahahaha.

So now the A in KAT-TUN is... auto-tune?*

*SWEARSIES IN THIS BLOG*

Dearest Jin formally announced he's leaving KAT-TUN. Oh. Let me recap it for you so you don't have to hunt all over the internet for articles:

Jin is all AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!
The other members of KAT-TUN have been saying nice things like "Please support us in our efforts and Jin on his solo project!" or whatever, but supposedly they're glad he's gone behind the scenes (I'd say they're fairly boring without him, but that's just me).
Johnny's been harsh, "Don't come crying back to me when you failwhale all over America. Not saying that you will failwhale or anything... because you better make me some money."
And all the rabid fangirls are crying and upset and hoping Jin will fail. Very mature, ladies. He didn't run over all of your dogs and laugh at your misery, stop acting like it.
And all of America is like ULTIMATE GAIJIN SMASH!

Director's cut

I'm just hoping that this incident hasn't created anti-fans similar to those in Korea. As far as I can tell, anti-fans spend their time spreading rumors and generally trash-talking whatever pop groups or celebrities they don't like. I've even heard of them buying the merchandise from whatever group they despise only to destroy it and post pictures of it on internet forums. Yes, really. I'm not sure if they harass or personally attack fans of the groups they don't like, but I wouldn't put it past them because most of them are some kind of crazy.

Otherwise, I haven't been doing anything incredibly interesting lately. I did get the jisho (dictionary) game for Nintendo DS and I highly recommend it. It's not as detailed as an EX-word but it's useful.

*KAT-TUN's name comes from each of the members' surnames:

K(amenashi)A(kanishi)T(aguchi)-T(anaka)U(eda)N(akamaru - often misspelled as Nakamura)

I think they should rename the group KUNTT for teh lulz.

日本語の勉強

ある日, 日本語で書こう...  Just not today.

Today I had my second broke-ass summer school session for Japanese! I'm not actually taking a Japanese course, I'm learning through helping my friends with their homework and following along on their worksheets. Cheers to spending money on flying to LA for concerts and not formal Japanese classes! The university is still using the same textbook that we had last semester, so I'm comfortable with the format of the lessons and whatnot. We use Tobira (literally "door," but they translated is as "gateway"), which is a traditional textbook and quite a few online resources for listening practice, kanji, videos, etc.

One really useful site is smart.fm. As far as I can remember it's a free service - you set up a profile and add activities or quizzes from textbooks. I just started the kanji practice for the lesson we're working on, IT'S SO HARD but it is a nice way to study.

Aside from studying, I'm getting into gyaru (the Japanese transliteration of "gal") and hime-gyaru (hime means "princess") subcultures. I discovered a super cutesy brand at Sephora called Tarina Tarantino and bought a bright pink blush. I've been seeing all the Japanese tourists wear this kind of blush and I wanted to try it out. Here's the blinged-out pink packaging:

Look at the rhinestones on that case!

Not the best lighting, but it's awesome.

And before I left for LA, I got my nails done. Mother chided me for spending $40 on my nails, but it's so pretty and my nails aren't dying from all the chemicals in nail polish. I offered to pay for her to get Calgel done on her nails, but she declined. It's been about three weeks and they're only starting to chip now:

I'd write,"すごい!" but I usually say, "すげえええ!"

because I don't like sounding like I'm in AKB48.

And as much as I love Egg/Men's Egg/Men's KNUCKLE (yes all caps, it's such a manly magazine) I still LOL when they publish things like this:

Yay for misspelled everything and not changing graphics around to suit the layout!