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!
I'm half japanese too! :) I like your blog a lot
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