Liebster Blog Award!/Learning Japanese?

In my last entry, I told you that I got an award from Wanda, AKA Lavenrose of Lavender and Roses.  So, let's not waste time, here is my response to the questions asked, as well as 11 things about myself!


I guess here are the rules:
1. Each person must post 11 things about themselves.

2. Answer the questions the tagger has set for you, plus create 11 questions for the people you've tagged to answer.

3. Choose 11 people and link them in your post.

4. Go to their page and tell them.

5. Remember, no tags back!

So, to start, here are the 11 things about myself:


1.  Not since I was 17 has a person come close to guessing how old I am.

2.  I love to plan.  So much so, I actually have a plan of action on the steps I want to take towards living the princess life someday, printed out and taped onto my dresser so I can read it for inspiration.
   
3.  Because I'm such a perfectionist, work tends to stress me out, even though I'm good at it.  I always end up thinking about how to improve my skills and worrying about making too many mistakes and getting sent home or fired, lol.

4.  I own an 18" Sailor Moon doll.

5.  My favorite flower is the lily, because once when I was 13, there were a few tiger lilies scattered around in a vacant lot.  I had never seen them before, and I thought they were so cool.  The next year, they had spread all across the field.  The year after, they cleared the area for new housing, but since then, lilies have always had a special place in my heart.

6.  I have occasional sleep marathons, where just one day out of the month, I'll basically sleep for a whole day, only getting up for things like food or bathroom breaks.  They're so refreshing, and the energetic feeling I get after one lasts for a long time.

7.  I'm currently working on having a signature pose!  You'd be surprised how much work I put into studying how well I look at certain angles and standing certain ways, and when I take photos of myself, I take at least 45, just so I can pick the best ones.  I'm a perfectionist even in little things like this.

8.  I really don't like overly loud places.  It's really overwhelming and exhausting.  I always need to take a break for a bit if there's too much happening.  It's the biggest reason why I could never live in the city.  Too many people, it's so claustrophobic and loud!

9.  One day, I would like to own a Vespa!  I even found a tutorial on how to make a cute cat ear helmet, lol.  I want to get it custom painted and custom upholstered and everything.  I even designed a cute 60's mod style suit to wear with it sometimes.  I'm currently into the LX-150, in fact.

10.  I hope to also one day go to high class resorts and stay at five star hotels.  Even if every other day of the year I live a perfectly normal life, every now and then, I want to go around like a celebrity and eat at an expensive restaurant or get the ultimate treatment at a spa where they wrap you in gold or something.  Just have a day or a weekend where I indulge.  Maybe a couple times a year.

11. Cute foods are such a huge inspiration to me!  I don't know why.  Maybe because I want to be both cute and sweet?  Lol!  I just see these cute cupcakes or cookies and whatnot, crafted with such extreme care and skill, and I think, I want to somehow embody that feeling.  It's hard to explain, am I even making any sense?


And here are the questions I was asked:
1. What is your favourite colour?
To be honest, I can't really pick nowadays, lol.  Something pastel, I guess.

2. What is your favourite food?
My mom's lasagna~

3. What is the fashion style that you are currently into? 
Hime-kei and Hime-kaji

4. Are you content with your life right now? 
Hm... I can't really say that I am just yet.  However, I am content with the direction I'm headed.  It'll be some time before I can be truly satisfied with my life, but I'll get there.

5. Have you visit an anime convention before?
I have not.  I'm not really sure what one is meant to do at one besides buy stuff and take pictures of cosplayers....

6. What do you do on a daily basis? 
If I'm not working or sleeping, I'm probably doing something with outfits, whether it's collecting more coordinates from online, putting together coordinates from what I already own, or sketching out ideas for coordinates in the future, trying to learn what has the potential to go together and also learning about how I want the fashion to fit around me.  I practice wearing and walking in my heels, I look at accessories that would go with what I've got, and I practice posing in the mirror so I can properly show off all the details in an outfit.  I do things like this every day so I can get better.  This fashion is totally 'srs bsns' for me, lol.

7. What would be your dream pet?
All dogs:  a Shikoku Inu, a Finnish Lapphund, or an Alaskan Klee Kai.  I think I have the best chance of getting a Klee Kai, as there are some breeders here in Illinois.

8. Short or long hair?
Long hair, though short hair is cute too!

9. If you were given 1 million dollars, what will you do with it?
First, I'd get an apartment!  Even with $500K at an apartment that costs $1000 per month to stay in, I'd be there for a while (though I don't know why I'd stay in a place that expensive, lol).  Then I'd pay off my student loans and pay my grandma back for what she's spent on them.  I'd also take a portion of it to do whatever I need to do in order to make my dream of owning an online shop that sells replicas of Gyaru clothing and shoes for ball joint dolls.  If I need to take classes or buy patterns or what.  The obvious might be to buy clothing or cute furniture or something, but if I'm working, I can always save up money for things like that.

10. Have you made any major purchases lately?
My last Yumetenbo order, which I made in June.  I bought 4 shirts, a tank top, a pair of shoes, room wear, and 2 dresses.  I loved everything I got, too!

11. If you were to dress in a drastically different style than the one that you are currently in, what would it be?
Rokku-kei.  It's always been a style I've liked even since I was younger, though I never pursued it out of fear of what my family would think.  Eventually, once I feel I'm a proper Hime-Gyaru, I would like to wear that style on occasion as well.  I have one full outfit I could totally do right now, lol.


I... won't be tagging anyone, lol.  But I had fun.  If you want to do it, I guess I can at least come up with 11 questions:

1.  Where did your screen name/nickname originate from?
2.  What is your favorite number?
3.  If you were to suddenly transform into an animal based on your personality, what would you be?
4.  Would you rather grow wings to fly or gills to swim?
5.  Besides basic necessities and important people, what is something you absolutely must have in your life?
6.  Where is your cellphone right now?  If you don't have one, where is your regular phone?
7.  A magical genie is giving you 3 wishes!  Pretending that all of your major issues are already solved, what would you wish for?
8.  Are you good at keeping secrets?
9.  You are given the chance to live in your dream house, fully furnished to your liking at 100% no cost to you for 5 years, but in exchange, you cannot talk to other humans for 3 of those years (barring emergencies).  Would you do it?
10.  If your life were a song title, what would it be?
11.  What do you like about yourself?

Enjoy!

In other news, this month was supposed to be my month for buying makeup... buuuut, I ended up being notified of something else, lol.  See, on my Firefox, I have a translator application called Rikaichan that allows me to look up words in Japanese just by highlighting them.  It recently updated, and on the side of the update page it loaded, it showed a list of the top 10 books on learning Japanese.

For me, learning Japanese seemed like a huge fantasy.  I've tried to learn, but either the programs were more focused on teaching basic phrases that I couldn't deviate from, or contained so much grammar jargon that I couldn't even figure out the English let alone the Japanese.  Whenever other people were so easily able (or so it really seemed) to speak and read Japanese, I always thought they were just good at learning languages.

I'm a 'why' person when it comes to learning.  It's not nearly enough to tell me that something is, but I need to know why it is that specific way.  Why did they use that word instead of that?  Why is it in that order instead of something else?  Things like that.  But I also need it to be broken down a bit.  Too much information at once overwhelms me, but I also need to know when I should stop.  I mean, what if the next lesson is important to understanding the prior one?  By the time I get to the end of a chapter, I'm still trying to figure out what it is that I even read....

After going through the list, I eventually chose 2 books: Japanese From Zero - Vol. 1, and Remembering the Kanji.  Thanks to the ability to read a little bit of the book before buying, I could definitely convince myself to buy Remembering the Kanji.  It's a really cute approach, where it shows you the kanji, tells you what it means, then gives you a little story in order to help you remember what it means.  Then it shows you the stroke order so you can practice writing it yourself.  It might not help me in speaking (it doesn't say what the kanji is in Japanese), but it'll definitely help with reading.  As for the Japanese From Zero book, it had a lot of good reviews, many stating its user-friendliness as a key.  More than anything, I feel if I can just get a foothold, a base to start everything with, anything else I learn from about it will just reinforce and elaborate on what I already know.  I also liked its progressive approach to learning the Kanas, where they introduce a few at the beginning of the chapter and from then on, any Japanese words that use it will be replaced, so by the end of the book, you no longer have to rely on romanji.

I ordered them on Thursday, and they haven't shipped out yet, so I guess I'll let everyone know if these books are helpful once I go through them for a few weeks.

I still have some money left over, so by the end of the month, as long as I don't go crazy and start buying random things I don't need (like candy), I should have enough to still buy some wishlist makeup as planned.

See you next time~!