YesStyle Order YAY

MY STUFF FROM YESSTYLE CAME IN!!! I only ordered two things since it I was just adding onto an order, have some photos:

 

I've been wanting a maxi dress like this since the beginning of summer when I started seeing all the Japanese girls at the mall wearing them. The restaurant I work in is always featured in Japanese tourist publications, so we regularly see the J-girl packs of 2-8 girls all dressed up (we almost never get cute J-boy packs, life just isn't fair). It smelled awful when I opened the package, so it's soaking in the sink right now lol. I don't *love* it, but it wasn't even $20 and it might grow on me.

I threw this top into the order since it was cute and fairly cheap. It looks kinda sloppy in the photo but it's really cute, I like this a lot more than the dress. I think I still have more than a dozen items in my wish list for YesStyle, I'm waiting to see if some of them drop in price like this top did.

Also got a new set of calgel done! I thought I chose light blue and silver as my colors, but afterward it came out looking more like mint green and gold. I went to Salon Glitter, which was a bit more expensive but the girl did the best job so far. I might actually get off my butt and get a fill for this one in a few weeks.

From an iPhone, I didn't know their cameras were so good!

Still searching for a mystical job in Waikiki... My dad cut out an article from the paper about the new mega Forever 21 store opening there, it's like a bajillion square feet of cheap and awesome designer knock-off clothes. I haven't climbed the retail/mall job ladder to be almost high-end just to go back to Forever 21, though. I like shopping there, but it's a mad house most of the time... we'll see.

Shenanigans~

Last week Friday I held a marvelous little party for my Japanese classmate Matsuura-kun! He's studying abroad in Japan for a whole year and his birthday recently passed, so I thought it would be good to send him off with a little party and fond memories of his Hawaii tomodachi. It wasn't a huge deal, I hosted dinner (oven pizza + edamame + gyoza + gross beer Gima-kun bought) and a movie at my house. But before we did all that, a few of us went to do purikura, which is always amazing.

Eyeliner makes your eyes pop :3

日本語を勉強してりる友達

Tracy and I made the best birthday card EVARRR for Matsuura! We knew we wanted to somehow incorporate our favorite idol group Arashi, so I decided to get a recordable card to illegally record their songs INTO a card. Genius idea, although most of the ones at Hallmark don't let you do a simple recording; for most of them you can record a message and then a stupid song plays. I found a princess one that didn't have a song snippet, but apparently it distorts the recordings made (we didn't figure this out until it was too late lol). And to make it even MORE awesome, we cut up some of my gyaru-o (male gyaru) magazines and pasted pictures of half-naked ikemen (good looking fellas heeeeyyyy~) into the card.

Best card of all time. OF ALL TIME.

I do hope Matsuura has a wonderful time in Japan, despite not being anywhere near the mega-tropolises like Tokyo. It'll help him keep his nose in his books! I told him to send pictures of his Japanese roomie, who I hope will be tall and handsome and maybe a JE reject.

Speaking of studying Japanese, I'll be applying to various places in Waikiki so I can have more opportunities to practice. Should've got a fill for my nails but I didn't think about it until it was too late. I think I'll just have to get them redone anyway, they're getting too long to type properly.

I also hope to be receiving my YesStyle stuff soon! I added a few things to an order another classmate of mine made, and I haven't been keeping track of how long it's been since the order was placed. I can't wait to have a maxi dress just like all the Japanese girls I see around the mall~

Allow me to get on my soapbox for a minute...

Preface: In college, I came to the conclusion that you don't do yourself any favors by being ignorant. When I restarted this blog, I told myself I'd start writing about politics and serious subjects, in addition to the fluffy stuff. I purposely made the layout more friendly to the fluffy stuff, in part because I wanted to present such things to people who wouldn't normally care about such things. I can kind of understand why people don't care about politics or feel that it is beyond their control, but I feel that such an attitude is generally inexcusable. Roll your eyes as you will at the talking heads on the news networks or politicians in an election year (like this year!), but the things they do and say affect everyday people, including you and I. To me, choosing to be ignorant or apathetic about politics/current events/why shit matters is the same as choosing to let people walk all over you, because you've taken yourself out of the conversation and taken away your own voice. Even worse, in some instances you've made yourself unavailable to help others.

This so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" has been a big shitstorm for a little while, and I find the discussion fairly ridiculous. It's not a mosque, it's not at Ground Zero, and it shouldn't be a big deal. It's a community center, currently named Park 51, that happens to be run by a group of Muslims. This is America, and everyone gets to practice whatever religion they see fit to practice. Your relationship with your higher power or whatever is your business, not mine. If you own land, you get to build whatever you want on it.

Those responsible for the 9/11 attacks were part of a militant Islamic group, and I'm pretty sure most Muslims want nothing to do with those guys. Grouping all the many branches of Islam* together and labeling them all violent jihadists is like saying every Christian church is like the Westboro Baptist Church (the group that protests everything and everyone with signs like GOD HATES FAGS, they're pleasant). But the discussion on TV and on the internet will inevitably affect everyday people, and that's what really bothers me. All the hatred and fear that gets stirred up with such inflamed discussion of Islam or Ground Zero or Al Qaeda affects people who just want to go about their lives and be happy. There's enough racism and xenophobia and fear already out there, why would you want to make it worse?

My dear Japanese grandmother experienced stuff like that after Pearl Harbor was attacked. She's told me people would hurl racial insults at her or treat her badly just for being Japanese, despite having brothers who fought in the war for America. I can't help but assume that Muslims go through that kind of crap everyday after 9/11, even though a few hundred victims of the attack were Muslim. Given the extent of the news coverage of this community center, I'd bet that innocent people using Park 51 for knitting class or playing basketball or prayer will get harassed, too. It's not fair.

I have no big influence on this issue, but I can put my two cents out on the internet and hope maybe someone thinks about it a moment after reading this post.


*Fun semi-related fact: Jesus is totally in the Qur'an! Check out the Wiki page.

I hate kanji, part 298482910

I was too lazy to post this to Twitter, but my story in a nutshell:

For Americans, kanji is DIFFICULT. For example~

My "classmates" and I were reading through our yomimono, like theいい学生 that we are, and we came across the first character in the equation. None of us had ever seen it before, though we were all familiar with the radicals (the individual components that make up a character - the roof, the water splash on the left side, the katakana マ thing in the middle). The textbook didn't show us that exact character and my DS jisho didn't want to cooperate when I tried to write it, so I took to Twitter. The almost unanimous answer from my Japanese followers was, "IT'S 冷たい (tsumetai - cold to the touch) YOU NOOB."

I know the differences between Japanese fonts can sometimes make reading kanji difficult, especially with the complex ones (機械 kikai - machine is a favorite), but these were clearly different since THAT RADICAL UNDER THE ROOF IS TOTALLY NOT THE SAME. It's not even simplified, it takes three strokes to write either radical! UGH. I HATE KANJI.

Aside from looking like a total waste of space on Twitter, I got my nails done last week.

Not quite how I wanted it to look, but it's still nice. I went to Smiley Nail and they did a good job, the gel is all even and was perfect before it started to grow out, but it was about $20 more than the first salon I tried.

Also had a chat with the big cheese owner of my working place, in regard to moving up in the company. It wasn't all that productive, and the thought of not having an opportunity to live and work in Japan made me sad. I've been dragging my feet about what I want to do since I won't be returning to UH next semester - move up at my job, get another job, continue to wait for that teaching position, apply to JET again (UGH). I definitely don't want to get stuck in management (not until they pay more, which is probably never), so I guess I'll entertain the idea of getting another job and wait a little longer.

Maybe I can work in Waikiki with all the J-boys wandering around, especially now that I know the two kanji for tsumetai.