[♬ The Libertines - s/t]

Oh thank you, Amy :)

I was going to place an order at Third Stage (feels like an eternity since the last one…) but they don’t have hotaru’s new – and last ;____; – maxi CD listed yet. ‘Te’ is out October 5 though and you should all buy it because they are the bestest Japanese band ever. Yes, this is my desperate attempt to plug them even though it’s already too late ;_;

Porori’s site is still up and Reito is still writing in his diary which has me hopeful they might start activities after a while. I really really REALLY hope they will find a new bassist soon. Hell, I’d join the band if that meant more Porori stuff -_-;;;

Earlier today:
Yuuya receives huge and heavy package from Japan
Yuuya’s Mama: You didn’t order an ‘assemble your own Japanese man kit’ this time, did you?
Yuuya: N-no…? o_O;;

… It was just a massive manga&magazines order. This month’s Cutie came with a super cute see-through leo-print pencase (which you can also use as a pouch, the bag for it says). And Betsuma came with a CD-ROM with printable letter sets, screensavers and a Love Com game amongst other cool things. I looove furoku~
I haven’t even started sorting through all the different tankoubon I got, I only picked out the Death Note books and read them in one go. Death Note’s just so cool, it’s my favourite shounen manga right after Hagaren (Fullmetal Alchemist) at the moment!

PS. And just for the record, I don’t even have a preference for Japanese men anymore! ^^;

[♬ Idlewild - I'm happy to be here tonight]

I don’t have anything entertaining enough to write because the only person who is highly entertained by my life is, well, myself -_-

Oh, I did my hair a few days ago. Before, it was this wonderful caramel blond with nice highlights, all naturally sun-bleached and everything. But I was a bit sick of the gold/copper nuance in it and wanted something more like a light brown-blond-ish (?) tone. But hair dyes never turn out the way you want them to and my hair is now quite dark, let’s say a dark light brown… now I always jump when I’m passing mirrors and see myself in the corner of my eye. I’m just not used to such a dark color -_-;; I’ll dye it back to the color it was before that big dying extravaganza because I look terribly pale with darker hair.

On the not-so-narcissistic front: I’m making my way through all sorts of classics, both movies and shoujo manga. It’s especially interesting with the latter because even though there are quite a few titles that can already be considered classics, there still isn’t a real canon of shoujo manga yet because it’s still a relatively young genre and you can either rely on recommandations by other (older?) readers or check the release lists of various publishers for their bunko editions and other re-editions because they mostly contain older popular titles. (But I always feel like I might be missing out on some really precious gems because I don’t trust the publishing companies; they probably just re-publish stuff that was commercially successful, but that’s not necessarily what I’m looking for…)

Escapism II – new anime: Fuujin Monogatari (Windy Tales). Do not feel put off by the admittedly very werid, minimalistic designs! Once you’ve actually started watching this series, it’ll become part of its great great charm anyway. The story is so wonderfully magical and dreamy, it’s almost like an artsy Ghibli movie ♥

CALL ME FUCKING PSYCHIC.
baroque are disbanding.

[♬ The Libertines - The Ha Ha Wall]

I just had the crappiest day in weeks. Not just me, but my whole family. We pissed each other off so badly today XD And as if things weren’t bad enough, BOTH Porori and hotaru decide to break up (AARGH!!!!) and I’m close to committing seppuku (it’s a supposedly cool thing to say and do among the J-culture loving guys and girls, I’ve noticed). I make hardly any sense today, I’m so sorry.

Someone please make this flood of Fountains of Youth (err, right) and penis enlargement pills spam stop. I’m both young and female, God dammit. (-_-;)

I’ve just uploaded a few new songs to the Coin Locker. Nothing special, really. Just some songs of albums I’ve been listening to a lot lately.

Finally got to see Mamoru Oshii’s Avalon tonight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before, at least from a visual point of view. Absolutely stunning. The music by Kenji Kawai – overwhelming.
After watching Avalon, one may think that eXistenZ has not even 10% of the complexity that Avalon possesses, the whole .hack saga is just for kiddies and The Maxtrix…? Ha, Hollywood blockbuster crap.

If only the pacing of the plot wasn’t so bad >_< The atmosphere throughout 95% of the film is far from dense, in fact so stretched and thin I could see through my TV screen. Also, the lack of emotions in the acting makes for some nice two-dimensional characters (oh the irony!). Hell, I've never felt more distanced from a heroine before. The way she didn't care for the people who should be important to her made me not really care for her either. Ah, it's such a shame. This could've been such an amazing, wonderful, mind-blowing, awe-inducing film. *dies*

A must-see for any science fiction, heck any movie enthusiast, nevertheless. Just give it a lot of time; especially the last third of the movie is worth a million mediocre Hollywood flicks.

It’s amazing how many fans of manga and anime and Japanese pop culture want to live in Japan. Not just go there on vacation but move and live there for a long time or forever.

During the many years I spent reading about Japan, its history, its culture, its religions and its social structures, I learnt so much about that country – maybe even more than I wanted to know.
Now I have this almost strange point of view, far away from that of an ignorant and indifferent outsider who’s satisfied with silly clichés (*cough*Sofia Coppola*cough*) but also not that of someone who’s fascinated by just about everything about that country and feels drawn to its exoticism.

I know of its good points, the things I’d highly enjoy while being there. But I also know of its problems as far as social problems are concerned. (And maybe they aren’t even necessarily problems to a Japanese person; but some structures and behaviours seem quite problematic to me. I don’t want to talk about them in full detail now because this is not the point of this entry.)
Being interested in a certain country (or certain aspects of it) is one thing, living there forever, however, is something completely different. And I believe I couldn’t live in Japan because I don’t think I’d be happy there.

It might sound cheesy but the more I learnt about Japan, the more I got to know about myself. And even more – I learnt to treasure the place I come from, its culture and its history. I feel so deeply rooted in its culture, I cannot imagine living within a society that’s completely different, that’s not built upon the same basis as the one I belong to. This isn’t just one special place I’m talking about, more a certain form of society I feel comfortable in. Just like Japan, this society might have its disadvantages and problems too. But I think I can live with them or contribute in changing things for the better. Or find my own little niche within this society where I can enjoy life, work, be creative.
There are probably many places I’ll be able to do this, whether here in Europe or North America or wherever in the world. Japan, however, is probably not among those places.

I went shopping with my mother. (NOT: My mother went shopping with me.) She dragged me through all sorts of shops that sell things I’m not even remotely interested in. Like flower shops where I saw an exotic-looking spider which brought back my spider trauma, sort of.
Feet hurt. Need coffee.
Speaking of which, coffee is my latest obsession… I never really liked it because it was too bitter, but my taste must have changed somehow. Now I need my daily dose of caffeine or I get cranky.

The baroque album came out today… Haven’t even ordered it yet though. To be honest, I’m a little scared what it’ll sound like. Seems like I don’t have much confidence left for them at the moment. The last singles were a bit disappointing. Maa.
The CD entered the Oricon charts at 17. So the giant ad on the Shibuya 109 building didn’t pay off at all. With the August events and the September shows cancelled and everything, one might get a bad feeling… (I don’t sound too optimistic about the band, do I? I’m such a bad bad fan ^^;)
Let’s end on a more positive note: I WILL buy the album of course, and I’m sure it’ll be fantastic. YES ^^V