I am a horrible blogger, part 2981

Yet again, my plan of keeping the blog alive and updated fell by the wayside. Since that last post in September, I did the following:

Got a second job. Quit lol.

Started working daytime shifts at the first job. 10x more stress!!!

RECEIVED MY CERTIFICATE OF ELIGIBILITY. HOT DAMN I AM GOING TO NIHONLAND.

Oh and I didn't see anyone or do anything really fun because I was working all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. And not normal hours where I get weekends off, but like 14-hour days at the mall. Apparently that doesn't stop once you enter The Real World, as my friends with full-time jobs and responsibilities and grown-up things like that can attest to. Not that I was ever a really big party girl, but when it comes to clubbing and drinking now we're all MEH. We still indulge every once in a while, but I've become especially bored with it.

And you know what else I didn't do? I didn't go see my dearest Slutty Jin in concert again! SAD PANDAS. KUNTT is coming to Hawaii at some point in the future, so I'm probably not going to be able see them either.

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In other news, today (even though it's past midnight I still consider it the same day 'til I go to bed) was New Year's Day, which means FUKUBUKURO. My mother can't say that 10 times fast. Hit up Spiral Girl again, got another bag full of goodies, and they actually fit me this year! I will have to post that.

Reading is fun

I'm not as active a reader as I'd like to be. It's not that I don't have more than enough material to keep me busy, I'm just lazy. My wish lists on Paperback Swap are impossibly long, and they get longer every time I hear about a great new book or see an interesting cover at a bookstore. I want to go back and read stuff from high school and college that I wasn't able to enjoy because I was too busy writing essays or analyzing them. This past summer I wanted to get through a stack of books that have been sitting around since forever, but I only managed to get through three of them. It didn't help that my enthusiasm was curbed with the first book, which I gave up on about 1/6 of the way in (The Other Boleyn Girl).

A good smutty book

I like smutty books; most of the books I read now have some theme about sex or drugs in them. I think that started when I read Memoirs of a Geisha, which led to my interest in Natsuo Kirino, the author of Out and Grotesque. I have Real World sitting on my shelf right now, but I'm waiting to read it until her next book is translated so I have something to look forward to (I'm a nerd lol). Kirino led me to other not-so-nice titles - In the Miso Soup, Battle Royale, Lost Girls and Love Hotels (super quick and super smutty!), After Dark and Tokyo Vice all fall into that sordid group. Jake Adelstein even tweeted me recently OMG I squee'd; I'm a big fan girl now because of that and the fact that he went to Sophia University. I'm reading his sugoi journalist tales of keeping up with the yakuza right now.

Go watch his Daily Show interview, he's funny.

But after a while I begin kind of guilty and spoiled by just reading fun books all the time, so I try to temper the filth with *real literature.* Normally I'd read the *real literature* in class, so I've been slacking on my own. I kept some Natsume Souseki novels from my last lit class and there are some other classic titles and anthologies lying around somewhere. Botchan has been staring at me from a shelf for about a year. And if they aren't anywhere in my room, I live near some funky used book stores where all the books are haphazardly stacked by genre and I have to wonder how they pass fire inspections.

I have been purposefully staying away from one author in particular - STEPHANIE MEYER. When I go to book stores I can usually pick up a book and read a couple pages, even if I chose only because the cover was pretty and I have no real interest in buying the book. I've tried ironically reading Twilight aloud to my friends who like the books, and I can't even make it through a damn paragraph without wanting to whip out a big angry red Sharpie and start editing. The films are unintentionally hilarious in part because the source material is so awful. Though her success does give me hope that maybe I could start writing bad fan fiction and make it rich and never work a day in my life.

Then I could just read smutty books all day!

It's Primary Election Day!

Today is Hawaii's primary election day. I can proudly say I voted! You know why?


If you don't vote, you don't get to complain.

I mean obviously you can complain if you don't vote, but if you purposely didn't take the time to make your voice heard through your votes then I couldn't give a shit what you have to complain about. People my age LOVE to complain about everything the government does or doesn't do, yet many don't get involved with trying to change what they don't like. You don't have to email your lawmakers or sign petitions or give money to campaigns, but you should at least vote when you get the chance. My parents vote in every election and I'm trying to do the same.

And honestly, only voting is kind of half-assing it. I know that every single email gets read by someone, even an intern*, at the offices of most lawmakers. Every time some controversial issue makes big news or an important vote comes up in congress, you can find ready-to-send email messages all over the internet. The last few I remember coming across had to do with international whaling issues and women's health care when the reform bill was up for vote. When Obama was elected you could donate $5 to the campaign and receive awesome stickers as a thank-you (which I believe I have misplaced ಠ~ಠ).

IT'S NOT THAT HARD. Don't prove people right when they say things like, "Oh these young whipper snappers don't vote and they're all apathetic! They don't care about where this country is going! (Raaaaawwwrr get off my lawn!)" I care, so I vote.

*Not that I'd know anything about that from my own personal experiences.

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~