A Very Long Chaotic Recap of My 2020 + 2021 Plans

I thought it was best to do kind of an end-of-the-year wrap-up. Also, I don't want to bring my previous post into the New Year (tho I will touch on it a little bit because a lot happened after I posted that and it's a huge part of my 2020). So let's talk about some of the positive (and negative) things that happened in my 2020. 

2020 started with a bang for me. I had previously reserved Acme concert tickets for my bestie Katie's birthday (we then upgraded to VIP). We dressed the fuck up and went to rock out to some very fun music. It was such a fun time. It was actually my first time meeting a band in person in YEARS. Not since 2010! That's wild, isn't it?  Honestly, I had a pretty fun but stressful 2019. There were ups and downs and I thought a good way to make the most of the new year was to start off doing something really fun.

While I felt overindulgent that day-if anything COVID taught me to have absolutely NO regrets and to just do things you want regardless of how it may look like at times. I'm glad I got my favorite matcha parfait even though sometimes it looks like I eat too much. It's a rare treat as is considering I'm hardly ever in SF and Maiko usually has a long line meaning I miss out even when I visit sometimes. It would be more than a year before I'd get to enjoy it again (and I still haven't had it since!). More importantly, I'm glad Katie and I dressed to the nines and took our very last PuriKura together. It was probably the best PuriKura had *ever* taken in all of the time I've collected print club photos. Sadly, a couple weeks ago, the PuriKura shop called PikaPika closed down in Japan Town due to how San Francisco treats small businesses. I'm very afraid for Japan Town given the current state the economy has been in thanks to the virus. 

Seeing PikaPika leaving broke my heart. Not even just from a "gyaru" standpoint. I used to follow a blogger on Livejournal back in my middle school days who used to talk about her life as she lived in Tokyo. This was during my "Prince of Tennis" phase and she'd go to all sorts of musicals and Kimeru lives. She was my biggest reason for wanting to eventually go to Japan to live. Something she did with her friends was PuriKura and when I visited Japan Town in San Francisco back when I was 14, I was thrilled to know that there was PuriKura there. PikaPika used to be located in a different location than the one people knew them in. They were tucked away in a downstairs corner of the Kinokuniya mall in what is now (or was) a stationery/gift shop store. That was my first experience with PuriKura and just Japan Town in general. I have patronized a lot of the small businesses in Japan Town and if it weren't for this small treasure of an area, I wouldn't have been exposed to as many things as I was. I would flip through Popteens, Eggs, and Ageha magazines throughout my youth in awe at all of the pretty girls on the covers. I'd scour through piles and piles of Johnnys goods and J-Pop/Rock CDs. I'd eat deco crepes at Belly Good and have cute Japanese-style-European-influenced teas at TanTan. I'd hang out at the okonomiyaki spots with my friends and talk for hours. 

I'd dress up later on and eventually cosplaying turned into doing J-Fashion full-force once Japan Town was privileged enough to have a bright silvery windowed building called "New People" that gave San Francisco it's first Harajuku branded stores. We used to even have large events such as J-Pop Summit where music artists and models would come and a lot of my old friends and I would run into so many different amazing opportunities whether it be modeling, contests, or the like. My youth was fucking magical in that sense... My early 20s were really rough in a lot of ways but there were so many amazing opportunities and experiences I got to have that not everyone gets and I made some of the greatest memories.

I've been told many many times how lucky my crew and I are to have such an awesome place and how we get to participate in a lot of legit experiences outside of a con setting. I always kind of prided myself about that thinking, "Hell yes, San Francisco is the coolest." 

I feel like a lot of the magic is fading and is being overrun by gimmicky shit and a lot of the fashion people and cosplayers feel ran out which kind of sucks. Pop culture is amazing and I wish there was more than just "anime" and "k-pop"...lmao. I don't know how to do business worth a shit (I only know how to find awesome clothes) but I've entertained the idea of opening up a really attainably priced J-Fashion consignment shop on multiple occasions just so the things I love don't die out... But that's a far off little dream considering I'm an English major and San Francisco rent is just...disgusting. 

Basically, I'm trying to say COVID is gradually killing off one of my favorite spots to hang out at and it's been one of the negatives of 2020. 

I'm grateful that I overindulged in Japan Town back in January because I'm almost frightened to go back and see what the fuck is left of it after all of this over... The Bay Area is notorious for running small businesses out and gentrifying the area. A lot of normal people struggle to find houses or rent even if they are normal working people (there are many who work multiple jobs or live in converted living rooms JUST so they can live in the city or remain in the place they grew up in). 

I have to explain to people that SF is amazing in a lot of ways but don't judge some of us California gals (especially the Bay Area ones)...the rent is notoriously high and a lot of people's paychecks solely go towards housing and car shit. There are two types of people: the ones who work in corporate who do extremely well and can splurge and those of us who are pretty average and have to make sacrifices to do the things we love because the cost of adult responsibilities is so high. It's a really weird give-and-take where you have all of these awesome events and things to do but you definitely got to budget/plan months in advance to do anything extravagant. I'm hoping one day something will give. It has to or nobody will be able to live there. 

ANYWAY, I then started school and my second semester started out amazing as I previously mentioned in a blog post. In terms of fashion, I feel like I really did fucking serve some school looks. I wasn't particularly aiming for "gyaru" but I will not deny that some of the outfits I had were influenced and I incorporated a lot of brand once I felt safer in my living environment. 

I feel like the Spring semester is always less hectic than fall for some reason. I always have more time to spend on myself because my class schedule isn't as fucking stupid as Fall for some reason. In a way it's good because I get a longer break before Fall than I do winter. 

Here one of my favorite looks that I did for school!

Before the pandemic locked everything down and my roommates all moved out, I hung out with a very good friend in February and my main crew in March literally a day before my whole ass state was in a mandatory lockdown. I had *just* discovered how awesome Marshall and TJMaxx are for finding makeup or just general items. The sudden change between hanging out and shopping like crazy to be locked inside alone was really wild. I had never seen anything like this before. My classes went from in-person to online instantaneously. I'm really glad I got to hang out with people quickly before we wouldn't be allowed to and I wouldn't see them literally for forever. 

Here are my "going out" looks that are very much so gyaru. I didn't leave gyaru. Just after the shitstorm that happened, I did it privately because I realized I didn't need a community to validate me being allowed to do gyaru. I could be as involved or uninvolved as I wanted to be. Little did I know, that I would eventually grow closer to some of the sweetest people in the community after just...an awful first impression and I'm so so grateful. BUT WE'LL GET TO THAT PART IN A BIT. 

While everyone moved out of my dorm complex, I was worried about me not getting refunded possibly and just being lazy AF about having to move my shit after I had barely just gotten back. Like holy shit. Not only that but I loved Sacramento so much and even though I wasn't going to get to do much, I was looking forward to just having more accessibility to the things I liked versus my family's residence. I also wanted to see what it felt like living alone because I had never done that before. 

SO..all my roomies moved out and it was just me for the rest of the semester. It was actually such a wild but fun time having such a large space to myself. I always felt like it was super taken over while everyone else was there and that I suddenly have the freedom to just linger without always feeling like I was in the way. I cooked all the time and even made it a thing to eat healthier. I made lots of vegetables during the quarantine and actually didn't run into issues finding food, unlike many people who sadly didn't have as much luck as I did... My answer was to hit up my local Korean market which was SUPER sanitary and not crowded at all. Target was next door and there would be a long-ass line and then there was no such thing at the store I went to. Some of my favorite items would be out sometimes but honestly, my Japanese skills really did help me find shit sometimes. No lie. People would avoid the ramens or udons they couldn't read. The same goes for certain packaging. Unless you know what it is-maybe you wouldn't pick it up if you can't read. 9/10 I'd find Tanuki Green soba or Kitsune Red udon with no issue at all. I'd find inari and pajun (omg how I LIVED off of pajun). 

I even had acquaintances tell me, "omg you eat so much Asian food!" Yeah. Because those were the stores nobody wanted to go to and the one I'd hit, I THINK is a family business. They also own a karaoke joint that my friends and I would hit up a shitton. I'd gladly take my business there over Target or Walmart any day if I could. 

During this time, I'd study and work on schoolwork while cooking a meal and in my free time, I'd either binge-watch High&Low (and scream about it on Instagram and to Katie lol) or watch M (the Ayumi Hamasaki j-drama). It was honestly such a fun time in a grim situation. I basically made a bunker and while I wasn't interacting much with people or physically using my voice or mouth (my mouth actually scabbed over because I would go days without talking) but I was still making the best out of a weird situation. However, I did try to interact outwardly as much as I could. I ended up watching a lot of Acme live streams where'd they'd talk to fans and show performance clips (which was dumbly fun omg...batsu game takoyaki was wild. You could tell my suggestion of Russian roulette was really last min and they weren't prepared but it was really amusing LOL!!).  Things like that made me feel a lot less lonely. 

I also turned the very large living room not only into my study space (I was making it a thing NOT to study in my room and only sleep there so I would stay motivated) but a filming and photography studio. I had finally made my return back to the realm of the internet when it came to gyaru fashion. I posted one of my favorite himekaji inspired spring looks and to my surprise, it was very well received. I filmed two tutorials around that time. I had so much fun in a more open space versus my room over here which is very cluttered and gets SUPER hot thanks to all of the ring lights. 

Here is one of the looks I did as is and well as the tutorial for it: 

Eventually, the spring semester ended and I had to move out of the dorm. I was pretty melancholy. Fall was announced to be online and wasn't looking forward to moving back to a pretty inconvenient and isolating area. I felt like my mental health (despite a pandemic) had improved so much based on just living in a more active environment. If you want to see what I got up to while living in the dorm, here's a pretty mundane vlog (tho I'm grateful I filmed because honestly..I am a university transfer student and my time on campus is so short/limited now thanks to this pandemic....): 

I packed all my shit and went home once I had finished finals. I had managed to make honors during a fucking pandemic and I was pretty pleased with myself but I was feeling a little melancholy. I had grown really attached to my dorm space. Especially since I had spent the majority of my second semester alone in it for a good portion of months. I knew I was going to miss Sacramento so much and I am still worried. The rent is going up in that area like crazy and at one point I thought I was going to build my life out there because I had gave up trying to live in the Bay Area. I didn't know if I could ever afford it and here I am now worried if I'd ever be able to afford Sacramento. Especially given that I can't (it's not a won't-it's a can't) drive. I *need* to be in a city to thrive which gets me to a huge life change that I'll mention in a little bit that I came to a decision about. 

 I somehow managed to participate in a couple of COVID-friendly activities and I was determined to make the best of my time here even if it wasn't fully what I wanted. I went cherry and strawberry picking at the beginning of summer. It was an activity that a lot of my friends hadn't thought about doing that was for sure open during the lockdown orders. I got a lot of comments asking where we would go picking at (hi, local farms that are struggling right now) and some of my friends even said that it had never occurred to them to go strawberry or cherry picking. It was a really great way to stay socially distanced and have a chance to go outdoors all the while supporting a local farm that needs all the help it can get. I super recommend going even if the lockdown lifts and a vaccine becomes mainstream in the warmer months. Supporting small and local businesses during post-pandemic will be extremely crucial. 

Anyway, because I was stuck inside, I had new found love for food and drinks had me making things all summer long. I learned how to make a variety of different things. My focus at first was non-alcoholic drinks and coffee drinks. I did everything from margaritas to boba teas to dalgona coffees. I literally have done it all. LOL. I deadass turned into a cafe. I wasn't getting to go out as much so I was trying to bring everything I missed over to me in the middle of nowhere. It's honestly a fun experience. I jokingly say to people, "Now someone can wife me the hell up" because I don't think I make things half bad.  I deadass went as far as investing in a Magic Bullet blender just so I could make tons of smoothies among other things.

Another project I started indulging myself in was renovating my room. My room at my family's place never felt like mine and to an extent? It still somewhat doesn't. We're renters and have never had the privilege of owning any sort of property. So painting walls or doing anything too excessive has always been a big no-no. But now I had all this dorm shit that needed to go somewhere and I immediately made my bedroom into a mini (almost Japanese-style) apartment save for lacking a bathroom and a kitchen sink. I made under my loft bed a huge storage area behind my dresser drawers where my bins went and my camera equipment (so it was out of sight and not looking like a fucking eyesore). I somehow squeezed my desk into a corner by the window and made it an office space that I kind of don't use because it's such a fucking tight space. 

More importantly, I turned my room throughout this lockdown into an actual theater and a club all at once. I did whatever run-of-the-mill TikTok-er does (no I don't have that app) and got LED lights. My room is *absolutely* wild. Eventually, I also got a laser starlight projector to layer on top of them and as of a couple weeks ago, I got an actual projector to watch concerts and stream movies on and it's made my living space a whole different definition of fun. 

I need to clean my room but I definitely need to do a proper room tour because my room is one of the biggest accomplishments of 2020 and from the pieces that people have been able to see when it doesn't look like a tornado hit-I get a lot of compliments on it from what people have seen of it. People especially like my very kawaii-ified purple fridge-which I mean, SAME. Even in my dorm room everyone always fawned over my purple fridge because nobody thinks they make fridges in that color (they do but people assume they're really expensive and this one wasn't at all). 

Here are pictures before I bought the laser projector and my theater projector. Each area of my room is kind of sectioned off by color and it's pretty neat. I have color-changing lightbulbs coming soon so change up the overhead lights as well because I am just a crazy person. I love lights. I was that kid that had lava lamps, black lights, and fiberoptic shit and this is basically that on crack. 

I decided to really be creative over summer vacation and into my hellish fall semester. I filmed a lot of videos even. I started out filming a couple of different make up tutorials. The first one was a rokku look that had a really interesting color combo and the other was my taken on a modern-ized Y2K look (I still have yet to find eye shadow that is a proper frost. jfc, I should probably just turn to MAC for that shit). Both were really experimental looks but I had a lot of fun doing them: 

Around this time we had a bunch of animals visiting my family's house. We live next to a field, so we get all sorts of animals and they typically eat what the feral and stray cats don't finish. We have possums and raccoons that visit and even owls funnily enough! The raccoons and possums however are as regular visitors as the cats are and they all co-exist without issues.

Back in the winter I think the parents of the baby raccoons were stopping by and they were *so* polite that I shit you not, they would stack the bowls once they were finished eating. Fast forward to months later and we have a blonde/albino raccoon in our yard. I've never seen one that color and apparently they're very rare. 

It's a baby. It comes out at weird times of the day because it's a baby. And then one day we see TWO blonde raccoons. We read up that females stick with their mom and the boys go off on their own. SO we have twin blonde raccoons. One boy and one girl. 

Once it got so hot that one of them decided to beat the heat and went to sleep in the fucking birdbath. LOL!! 

So yeah the animals visiting have been nice and everyone's been insanely well behaved. I've been feeding Bushes the feral cat and Fences the black stray mainecoon since 2017. Bushes lives in the yard where I think Fences stays somewhere else.

It's really funny because despite Bushes not wanted to be touched and being afraid of humans, she'll get close to us if my sister-in-law's cat Cheddar is around. She has a very large one-sided crush on Cheddar and when he's outside in the yard she will follow him everywhere to his annoyance! 

So yeah, even though the lockdown has not permitted me human visitors so much, I've been allowed to have animal visitors and they have really brightened my day. 

The highlight of 2020 is seeing the animals co-exist together and visit. It's not interesting or fashion related but to be fair that's almost as eventful as it's been getting since there's a pandemic going on. 

Fall semester began and I felt burnt out into week two. It was really crazy. I was taking 16 units when the average college student usually takes 12. So basically I was taking a whole ass new class on top of everything else and it wasn't even just the unit change that made me feel swamped. I had taken 16 units before online back at my junior college but for some reason because of COVID, I and a lot of my peers felt like professors had just written out their lesson plans over the summer and were just dishing it out with triple of the work without really keeping in mind how hellish the deadlines were. As an English major, this is especially stressful in the sense that you're not just cranking out papers. I can shit out stuff like that no issue. It's the amount of reading for each of my classes that I have to do and memorize for weekly quizzes on top of the papers that really gets me fucked up. Reading is pretty time-consuming especially if you're a huge notetaker like I am. 

I did try to have some semblance of fun around my birthday. My friend Janelle had gone out of her way to visit me and I was very grateful for that. We actually are the same age and had a lot of the same acquaintances growing up and yet we had never been introduced to each other before. She is such a cool person. She first off went to the high school down the street from mine and similarly to me, was anime club president, which is wild because I'm stupidly sure that she and I could have so many stories to exchange on our experiences with that shit in our youth. We also went to the same university surprisingly! I dropped out of San Francisco State because my commute was hellish from the area I had moved to. I originally lived in the Bay Area when I applied and my family was pushed out of our home and had to move an hour and a half away from our original home-which really fucked me over during my college process because I didn't think to apply for forming because when I applied, I was a train ride away you know? Janelle had gone on and graduated from my first choice of university but became the craziest nail tech ever. Like...this girl is the epitome of gyaru and I really want to get her further into the fashion because her lifestyle is SO PERFECT for it. 

She has ParaPara'd for ten years, met some amazing Paralists who matter, and for a while did a lot of gyaru-style nails and even went to some nail shows in Japan to improve on her craft. My favorite set she did was of Haruka and Michiru from Sailor Moon. <3 kyaaa. She travels often to Disneyland with a couple of others acquaintances of mine who are the most productive and cool people ever met (and I'm so shy around them because I am not as accomplished ;_;) but she also goes back and forth between Japan and the Bay Area...so I feel like she and I's friendship is for sure going to be a long-lasting one because she's the type of person who would hit me up an ocean away in Japan and visit me. 

I'm so grateful to have met her. I feel like because we are the same age and have had similar experiences in close-by areas in our youth, that we really bond well. The fact that we've always heard about each other but was never introduced still freaks me out a little bit. She is by far the sweetest person I've met and I can't wait to even introduce her to my main crew because we're all older women so I feel like we'd all get along just fine versus some of the people who I hung out with before who were a little younger..so there was a bit of gap in where we all were in our lives. 

She visited my neighborhood (she has gotten COVID tested a lot due to her line of work and I haven't gone anywhere to be COVID-related anything and that's why we were able to hang out) and went as far as bringing all of her old Egg magazines and provided me with really fucking delicious Happy Lemon boba. Can you believe it? I had never tried Happy Lemon before!! -yodels- She also without even know (wtf) brought my FAVORITE 85C cake to me for my birthday. I was so impressed. LOL. 

I also brought some cotton candy style grapes along with some other goodies (sakura related things) as well as my gyaru magazines. We mainly just talked and flipped through magazines until her boyfriend came by to pick her up. ahaha I'm always so awkward around people's boyfriends. I immediately feel like a third wheel without anyone trying. I'm just awkward and shy around new people but he was a gentle guy. :) 

I vlogged the day here. I didn't film much because I didn't want to be intrusive towards Janelle especially upon the first meeting. However, I was so appreciative of her going out of her way to meet up with me. 

I feel like I can learn so much from Janelle. One, she's great at nails and I feel like that's such an awesome skillset to have under your belt. I do a little bit of nail work but not gel. Mainly just me fucking around with my real length of nails and deco-ing them out. Also, like I mentioned, Janelle has ParaPara'd for 10+ years and very actively. She's performed publicly and is one of my most HUMBLE PEOPLE I have ever met considering how much fucking cool shit she's gotten to do. She's inspired me to up my game on so many levels. 

I'm absolutely bragging about my friend but like ...forreal this girl rekindled my love for ParaPara. 

Honestly, I had a weird relationship with ParaPara because the gyaru community at one point was very "ParaPara or bust" when it came to the standards of gyaru which kind of turned me off. I love Eurobeat and ParaPara but I am not good at it. I enjoy watching it the most and being a cheerleader. I love ParaPara All Stars and watch their videos often as well as the really old Egg video with Aina Tanaka in it. Janelle inspired me to want to try to ParaPara again without that added pressure of having to be perfect or it being "gyaru enough". I just wanted to learn for fun. I used to perform "Koi Buchiage" and "Night of Fire" often in high school and nowadays I'm trying to learn "Velfarre 2000" and "Dub-I-Dub" mainly because Velfarre 2000's "Tokyo" part always makes me feel so powerful and "Dub-I-Dub" is so very agejo and was one of the first Eurobeat songs I found outside of the Initial D franchise. 

I used to also be a Stepmania and Dance Dance Revolution type of gal and got exposed to a lot of other songs like "Nori Nori" through those games so I can't say that Eurobeat and ParaPara aren't my gyaru roots because they are. It's just the fact that gyaru kind of forget there's other music outside of Eurobeat that can easily make you JUST AS gal as the next person. I actually went as far as to make a YouTube playlist of gyaru-themed music on my YouTube channel to prove this point. Either the songs have gyaru in it or are songs gyaru listen to. Some lyrically are gyaru. 

I remember sharing some of my music stuff and some gals in the comm were really hyped about finding other music. <3 I'm so grateful that you guys appreciate some of the things that I share with you. I really want to break free from these really rigid standards that god knows who put in place. There are "rules" to gyaru but I feel like they've been pretty linear for awhile now and I'd like to share a lot of the gyaru-related content i grew up on that is just as acceptable. Gyaru is a varying path. I don't think that you have to tan, be old school, and only ParaPara to be gyaru. You can like other things that are just as gyaru. There are other sub-styles and other ways of life and I think it's important to showcase that. 

Then my birthday came around. This year is the last of my 20s. Can you fucking believe that? I was woeing over the fact that my birthday (and Halloween gdi) finally fell on a Saturday and I couldn't do shit. Nothing ever gets to happen exactly on my birthday. Ughh. I made the best of it. Over the summer, I experimented with my hair a lot. I figured that if I ever wanted to do fun stuff with my hair, I should probably do it now because once I start working I can't have pink, purple, or blue hair. So I said, fuck it and bleached it. 

So for my 29th birthday, I had BRIGHT PINK HAIR. This was also the first time I ever did something outside of some semblance of agejo. Every single birthday I've done has been some type of Ageha-esque thing but this year I opted to be bright as hell and wear Cocolulu and some shit that looked like Cocolulu but wasn't. I really wanted to go for that retro-2000s vibe but with a brighter twist to it. I love messing with color lately. The outfit I'm wearing is a combination of a Cocolulu halter top, with a Shien daisy camisole underneath because the Cocolulu halter is a little sheer (I'm assuming because it's so old) and then a Shien mini-skirt that really matched well with the Cocolulu halter. It really gave off the "flower power" vibes I was aiming for. The shoes are very large platforms that I found on FashionNova during the spring. I hate the clear plastic-y bit and the fact that they're cork platforms but this is as high as I can get a damn platform right now. 

I would love a pair of LaCarte shoes but those are extremely hard to find because shoes just eventually fall the fuck apart. I love the 60s dip in the platform heel and the wooden shoes. I've even see LaCarte platforms in that Y2K metallic silver and it makes me cry a little inside because I love that vibe so much and can remember that being a mood back during my childhood. 

These are some of the gifts I got myself for my birthday. Tsubasa Masuwaka ends up having me go down a rabbit-hole during the fall. She has been really into Chinese brand makeup lately...as the rest of Japanese YouTube has been. I ended up finding Baozi and Hana's make up line called FlowerKnows which has been STUPIDLY popular in Japan. Especially the unicorn line. If you actually want to be kind of on-trend in regards to makeup trends in Japan, Jill Stuart and Anna Sui have always be timeless and have intricate packaging, but FlowerKnows gives those brands a large run for their money and the price point is comparable if not a little cheaper. Shibuya109 has gone as far as promoting FlowerKnows that's how large this makeup brand has become. I've even seen vkei boys wear their stuff. It's a thing so I splurged and got a couple of lip and cheek products from a website called Devil-Inspired. They're mainly a lolita clothing store but they do sell some items that could be gyaruable. But I think they're the only authorized re-seller of some Chinese branded makeup for overseas buyers and occasionally, they'll do free shipping which makes buying from them even better. I really want to try the angel highlighters that came out recently but they are $$$. 

My friend Chi also came and visited me a little before Janelle did. She, like a lot of people right now, was cleaning out her closet and was sending some J-Fashion stuff my way knowing that I would get use out of most of it. A lot of my friends are older so they're either changing in regards to lifestyle/aesthetic or they're just straight out settling down and retiring from J-Fashion. I'm actually one of the few old ladies still participating in this stuff and doing it super actively. So a lot of my friends end up giving their old things to me knowing that I'm most likely not leaving this hobby anytime soon. I'm definitely in the eyes of certain people a little "too old" to be gyaru or doing any of this. But you know? Life is too short to live other people's standards of living. This is your life. Do what makes you happy. I'm a single 30-year-old. I'm getting my education. I know that there's an appropriate time and place to do this stuff. I don't intend on marrying or having children. Even if I marry-I don't want kids. A cat. But not kids. SO...I find that because of that, it's acceptable. I'm not taking food from children's mouths to feed my aesthetic lifestyle. And even then, there are plenty of Gyaru-Mama on the internet that are able to balance their family life and fashion life. I don't think it's a bad thing to enjoy yourself but I feel like not being "settled" kind of is my way of justifying why I am allowed to do this. lmao. 

ANYWAY, Chi gave me a ton of different clothes. Some don't fit me but probably will once I'm a little bit more active. However, a lot of the Listen Flavor things did fit me, so I ended up doing a really fun rokku/Harajuku style look with one of the tops she donated to me. 

The look was super-well received and the make up tutorial is actually one of my favorites. Any time I do this sort of under-the-eye red eye makeup, I get a lot of questions on how to do it, so the makeup tutorial did quite well because it literally answered that question. 

I feel like ever since I dyed my hair, my looks have been uber fun looking. I also for my birthday got myself a Chi (ha) Spin-and-Curl iron and I swear to fucking god that shit was the best 100 bucks I have EVER SPENT. Like, if you have a hard ass time curling hair? Get that shit. It's a really painless way to get really tight curls. For some reasons ever since I grew my hair out super long, it's especially hair to get my hair to stay curled and even then it's hard to get it to curl high up in my hair. I used to use a flatiron for my curls and I used to also be able to some really insanely big intricate gyaru hair when I was younger. My hair was somehow "cut right" and in the right layers and ever since I accidentally cut it wrong/too deep in, it's been kind of hard to do the stuff I usually do. But this iron really does help me kind of get my hair back at the level I used to be able to have it at. 

Here's the tutorial for this vampy kuro-kawaii (lol that's an odd word) look. I don't think this is full-on gyaru or menhera. Hence kuro-kawaii. You can't see it but there are thigh highs and a leopard print Glad News skirt on the bottom. it's just hard to take outfit shots as my own photographer. 

During that time a couple really chaotic things happened in the background while everyone was swamped under heaps of school work. California was enduring awful weather which eventually lead to some of the worst fires my state has ever gone through. Usually, it doesn't affect my area so much but I deadass got a possible evacuation order on my phone. It was honestly really scary. The hills near San Jose were on fire and spread into Patterson which in turn, was about to spread into my area. Supposedly you could see the fires run down the hills and if it weren't for the fact that my area was on flat terrain with an aqueduct despite me; I would have had to get the fuck out of the area. There was one day were the sky looked batshit crazy. It was noon and it looked like 6 am. My picture does not do it justice by no means and honestly, imma add a stolen pic from San Francisco because that's really the extent of what the fuck it looked like for a day or two. It was really scary. I could smell the smoke form inside my room-that's how bad the air quality was. 

As you saw in my pic, it doesn't really do it justice. I actually slept in thinking it was really early given the lack of light outside only to wake up around 1 pm and realize it was 1 pm and THAT dark outside. It was really trippy. Here is also a picture near Lombard street in San Francisco that does this situation way better justice. The pyramid-like structure is basically in North Beach area (near China Town and Little Italy) called the Transamerica Pyramid. It's a pretty distinct structure and I used to (when I lived in the Bay Area) walk by it all the time on my way to get gelato in Little Italy at a now-closed shop called Naia. It was so dark outside in the middle of the day that street lights and headlights on cars were on which was so fucking strange. 

Also going to share my emergency alert to prove I wasn't bullshitting about an evacuation order. lmao. I was in the middle of class when my phone sounded off. The amount of State and Nationwide alerts I've gotten this year have been insane. I've woke up out of my sleep at first thinking a bomb or attack was happening because the beeping was a really rare sound to hear but now it's happened so much that I am accustomed to it.  Which is kind of scary considering that if something awful happened I'd be immune to hearing this shit. 

It was really crazy to see the sky be literal Halloween-orange. It reminded me of some shit from American Horror Story Apocalypse. I think even joking told a friend that Satan had landed on earth and it was the most appropriate thing to happen in 2020 and what we deserve. lmao Because also during this time my country also going through massive political unrest. I'm not going to go into this too much because I just don't like arguing with people on politics and I feel like a lot of people and I would not be friends if we really did fucking go deep into this but basically, my country has a lot of fucking work to do. It was absolutely exhausting trying to explain to my southern raised mother how certain shit isn't okay and that America is basically third-world with a Gucci belt..and probably a fake one at that. 

I think some of the intentions people have for our country are well-intended but that there are bad people who exist. Basically, it's 2020. The shit that has been going on in America (a country that claims to be a leader) is not okay and I thought we were over this type of behavior towards minorities but we clearly aren't. One day, I hope we're all able to have a discussion about shit. People's feelings would probably get hurt but I think in order to get past a lot of shit-we have to openly speak and be just as open-minded. More importantly, we have to be kind to one another. Something that hasn't always been going on and was SO exhausting during the fucking election in my country. 

A lot of people are really apathetic with our seemingly two-party system (there are other parties but they kind of get outdone by the two main parties) and like I said...I wasn't going to go into this but basically...the election literally tore families apart and made a lot of people not be friends with each other and in my opinion-each to their own. It's usually why I don't openly talk about these things but just, on a final note: You matter. Please be kind to one another even if sometimes it's incredibly difficult to do. Be the better person even when others aren't. Trust me, you'll feel better about it and they'll be the one's who look crazy. Listen to people. You don't always have to agree but come to terms that it's also okay to agree to disagree and leave it at that. I know it's *so hard* to do. Sometimes I read articles or see videos of people being Karens and want to punch people in the face too. Trust me. I know how hard it is but sometimes you just gotta be the better human being and laugh at those types of inhumane people and hope that one day they learn or have a circumstance occurs that teaches them. It's not your job to be that person. 

All of that was also going on during my semester and it was for sure creating a really tense and exhausting atmosphere that made it very difficult to stay focused at times. Sometimes I had to cut off all of my social media because I'd be hooked on the news or just feel angry and disappointed. I was frustrated. 

Then the previous post I did on my blog happened. Which was kind of chaotic because I was sick at the same time for a few weeks. No, not COVID. I bet some of ya'll maybe wish that considering all the shit I said. lmao. Forreal though, I guess I should say some stuff post-Papillon entry because some good and bad shit happened since then. First off, of course I take Papillon shit personally. That thing was my baby. Of course, I'm going to be salty. Papillon had been a project just lingering in my head for years and it was hard to see it go the direction it did and what it had to certain people with others getting hurt. Also, if people hadn't put my name in their mouth to start with? I would have probably kept all the shit I said to myself and went to the grave with it. I was encouraged to talk because some stuff was spread about me that wasn't true and I was determined to clear my name with some of the victims of that stuff which lead to others insisting that I should talk about my experience. So I did. Trust me, I didn't want to. I knew it would cause some drama but I also really needed to clear my name. Even if it meant people would hate me. I talked about *my* experience. That may not be other people's experience but that was mine. I didn't want to kill off the magazine or anything like that. 

Also, I can't be jealous of my own brain-child. I was a part of it so I can't be jealous about "not being included" or whatever. No, that's not why I said things. It's the fact I was given an extremely hard time in an already garbage situation going on my personal life. I wanted this thing to thrive but there were certain people who I won't name (that weren't part of staff even) who gave me an extremely hard time early on. There are certain people I am convinced hate me and no matter what I do, they will always find a reason to dislike me for whatever reason. -shrugs- I get it. It's realistic to have everyone like you, but when you're trying to work *with* everyone, that makes it difficult. 

Basically, group work is hard. I will stress this again too because this is why I was taking my experience to the grave until I couldn't because some bullshit was spread and people were getting hurt. Despite this though, there are some really amazing and very sweet people who I worked with and I didn't want my crap with the magazine to affect their experience working with Papillon. They deserve every bit of spotlight and credit that they get and were/are incredibly humble people who either model or work behind the scenes and I'm still forever grateful for them and was honored to have them be a part of my team. It was hard to even talk about this shit because I at no point, wanted to hurt them. The reason I stayed silent for so long was for those people and also out of fear that I would never be heard or believed. I even had others admit to me if I had spoke up as what was happening to me went on; they wouldn't have believed me. They had to experience some stuff for themselves for what happened to me to make sense sady. Which really sucks because like I mentioned in my previous post, I would have gladly been the bad guy or whatever else if it meant only one person got hurt. 

There are some other people who got big-headed, got super ahead of themselves, and needed to really stay grounded. Some people really got caught up in the social media game and while I understand that things like that can potentially be a business. Gyaru is not a mainstream thing. It will never truly be marketable in a way that is profitable and even so, I honestly don't want something I worked with to be the source of outsiders profiting off of something that is so niche. I don't want that type of energy in something I love so much. I want people to just have fun and learn from one another. So many people have really amazing things to share and say. That's what should be valued. Your friendships and the bonds you make with other people are way more important than your follower count. 

My article for the magazine felt hypocritical at one point because while that IS what I truly value above anything else, I got caught up in the hype based on the company I keep. Plus, I don't know..just the whole "omg what a queen" or "🔥 🔥 🔥 " or reposts of people's pics occasionally feel superficial and all for show. I rather someone say more than just that if they're going to comment. I rather someone repost the looks they think are my best rather than every single post I do. I rather people DM me and chat. That just feels way more genuine. 

A lot of rumors were spread about me during that time that wasn't true and that's what made me have to say anything to start with. I was definitely hurt and sometimes you have to kind of distance yourself or stay silent knowing you'd kind of act on your emotions and go-off on someone. I'd think I'm a forgiving and humble person but a lot of people got hurt in the crossfire either based on the magazine or other projects outside. 

It had gone as far as my closest friends in real life giving me an ultimatum of stay doing all this and lose them/not have them involved in my life because my shit was affecting them or give it all up and repair my friendship with them. No social media clout or magazine could ever replace my friendships and I will choose my closest friendships each and every single fucking time. Those people are dear to me and I still ashamed that I let them be affected. They weren't even gyaru or a part of the community. They showed up to support me and kind of got affected by some shit in return. 

The plus side of all of this garbage having to come out was people really made it a thing to change my perspective of the gyaru community. My first impression and experiences with it weren't the greatest. I have been gyaru for a very long time. Like..ten years. But I had never involved myself with the community until Amino happened and then I started talking to others at a distance. I had been doing gyaru for 6-7 years at that point. It wasn't until I joined SnG that I realized that maybe this wasn't the community for me but I stayed a part of it because people I knew in real life encouraged me to be involved. I tried very hard and wanted to even pursue projects with the community that had been lingering in my head since forever ago. I couldn't show up to international or national meets but I wanted to try to do my part in some way. 

It was stressful and instantly regretted not just doing what I was doing and staying to myself. That was until I cleared the air about what all went on and people were determined to reach out to be and really talk and beyond just clothes and gyaru (tho a lot of it is about that). That's the silver lining from this. I have made a lot of really cool online friends this past month and I am so grateful for them. 

Truly, they have taught me that not everyone is horrible. I was encouraged to join another FB group that has popped but I have decided that FB groups are not for me and that just...it leaves me open to people potentially starting shit with me or finding reasons to. 

I think anyone truly wants to talk and be friends with me, it's best on my own platforms. Feel free to dm me to chat. I'm always open to that. Sometimes I don't see my alerts if you're a new person and sometimes my haptics on my phone straight up suck but I'll eventually find your message. 

Forreal I've met so many different people from all over the place and have gotten to learn about how other people live in other countries and their perspectives on things. It's been really nice actually. I'm so grateful to the people who reached out or have just been supportive of me and my work. 

I'm less scared to comment on people's pictures or videos now. I used to think everyone hated me. LOL. Figures that others thought I hated them.

No. There are some people whose attitudes I don't like or like...working with them is hard but...maybe they're fine as a person it's just working with them was like AHHH. But that's a different thing. 

But yeah now I can just be obnoxious and be like "HEY! I like your outfit. ect.ect." I try to be really really mindful of my comments on people's content. More than just, "this looks great" or bunches of emojis. I really want to meaningfully comment on someone's work and genuinely be excited about it if I connect to it. 

This means I don't always comment on everything. Just stuff I connect to or know I can say more than just "this cool" towards. Don't get offended just know I want to be able to say more to you. Some of us have different things we like and that can make it challenging. I gotta know what to say!

Basically, I have my own platforms that I can write on. There's no jealousy. There's bitterness maybe but that's because I cared about something a lot and wanted it to be something it couldn't be. I still have a lot of content that was meant for Papillon that I can share on my own blog or on my YouTube. I've made a thing to post on my Instagram stories a lot. Sometimes I think I'm fucking obnoxious but then other people are assuring me very aggressively, "NO I LOVE THIS SHIT". I'm very opinionated about certain issues involving J-Fashion and gyaru especially. 

I'm grateful people enjoy the shit I post even if I'm a bitch sometimes. I swear it's out of love and not meant to be bitchy. It's me being frustrated if anything. Other things I post are clips of music videos or pictures I find on the internet that inspire me. 

In all, I'm having a great time with it and I'm just trying to stay chill and just do my own thing now a day. 

OKAY let's talk about some better things shall we along with some things in the future that might be happening. 

I told you that I was making content and that I was also learning how to like...literally make things. One of my favorite okonomiyaki places shut down in Japan Town and got replaced but another 1000 ramen places in SF (jfc)... Izumiya thank god is still around and it's been around since I was born. And I'm literally praying to god San Francisco doesn't run out pretty much the only genuine okonomiyaki restaurants still around for another god damn ramen joint. 

However, I took the initiative to make Okonomiyaki myself. I will say, I make it as good as MifuneDon, if not better. I'm actually really shocked that I managed to successfully make it. Okonomiyaki is actually one of my favorite Japanese foods so far (I swear it's the southern in me. sometimes I wonder if my ass just needs to live in Osaka. I hear the people there are gaudier and the food is amazing. I'd probably just be fatter than I already am and gaudy at that point lmao). I'm really happy that I figured out how to make it. 

I feel like I'm learning how to make all sorts of my favorite dishes lately and I'm like: is there even a point in eating out? I can make everything here! 

Post-pandemic, I might just cook for friends and have us watch movies on my new theater projector. We were almost doing that type of shit anyway right before the pandemic hit. Katie, Michelle, and I were basically watching all of "Hana Nochi Hare" (new gen Hana Yori Dango) literally the night before lockdown happened. 

I have a feeling Katie and I are just going to scream about High&Low to Michelle and have okonomiyaki parties. 

Anyway, I actually recorded my process of making okonomiyaki for the first time. I had multiple friends message me (most of them people I know in real life) saying how me making okonomiyaki had inspired them to do the same. I'm really glad that I'm encouraging other people to make the most out of the quarantine. I know it's hard. It doesn't replace actual socialization. 

I fucking hate Zoom because I'm on Zoom all day for classes and have video-call fatigue. I can't wait to hang out with my friends in person and just leave my fucking neighborhood. I'm tired of seeing the same things all the fucking time. 

One last milestone I can talk about is feeling attacked by fucking internet. LOL. But in a good way I swear. I think I was talking to somebody about luxury goods and how I'm not normally that person but there are a few things that I would love to have in my collection that are luxury brands. One of those things is the Takashi Murakami x Louis Vuitton collection items from 2003. The bag is iconic. I would love to have it but it's definitely out of my price range now.

It's funny because the internet basically showed me an ad for "TheRealReal" and the Murakami x Louies popped up in shoes. I didn't know the fucking made shoes for this collection. And it was in a design that I had never seen before with silver bling, silver snakeskin, and satin. 

I looked up the price of the shoes and my mouth dropped. These bitches attainable that it would be almost stupid not to buy them. 

They were 170 but the "Honey" app on my browser threw in a coupon and.....that made these shoes 90 bucks. I was sold. When I got them I noticed that the retail price was 525 dollars. I think the amount of money I saved was more braggadocious than anything else. A bitch loves a good bargain.. 

Ya girl bought her first-ever luxury item-something I never ever thought I'd be able to do. Especially not in college. Me not socializing due to COVID has saved me a lot of money and I'm hoping to be an online-tutor if my schedule for school calms the fuck down. 

In my head as purchased these mules, something told, "This isn't the end. This isn't your last luxury purchase. You're able to work hard but have a lot of fun experiences". I don't know why my mind or whatever in the universe was telling me that... I don't know where my life is leading to exactly but maybe it was a sign that greater things are coming as long as I keep my head up and work very hard. 

I don't mean particularly in a materialistic way but just in a, "fun experience" type of way. I enjoy nice things but I also want to travel and meet new people. Fashion is my hobby and it would be amazing to do and take things further in the future. A lot of the things I do aren't necessarily to flex but are things that honestly regardless if they're "high-end" or not fit me as a person. When everyone saw the Louies I bought, it wasn't the fact that I could afford Louies that was commented about, it was the fact that these were very such so my stye. I love a good throwback item. I love 2000s styles. I love bling even and that was even on the shoe. The design was so fun with the cherry blossoms on them. Plus, they were actually really unique. This wasn't the typical leather design. These were satin and had little bows on the toes even! So it was more like, "this fits your tastes really well" rather than "oh she can afford this lifestyle!" 

I know some people buy exclusively high-end brand and kind of flaunt it and that's just not my style. I just share whatever appeals to me and looks good. I don't think ever turn into that girl who just owned endless amounts of Chanel and Louie Vuitton. It ain't my style. lol. I like certain pieces but it's not what defines my style. 

Bu yeah. Something told me I'll get to have a lot more fun experiences and "firsts" in the near future just as long as I keep doing what I am doing and keep wanting to progress and grow. 

Speaking of the future, I think this is a good time to mention that around this time, I talked to my "major" advisor who told me that basically, COVID kind royally fucked over a lot of opportunities for volunteer educators. I can't drive so that also kind of limits me and my country also has this thing where having a Bachelors is not enough to become a teacher. You have to go to graduate school and teach for free. Without financial aid. Yes, I could get a loan but that's either going to tuition or rent not both and I can't be doing rent without tuition. Basically, I was backed into a rock and a hard space. 

So, then I started asking about the TESOL certification program. Something that I can afford to do and something my childhood best friend participated in. I was told a lot of people resort to this instead of trying to teach in the United States. I was previously a Japanese major at my last university (and took four years of Japanese in high school) before I dropped out. I went into English as a major thinking it was more versatile than Japanese in regards to work. Not only that but I don't think you need a degree to pass the proficiency exam (N1-N3 I think?). SO...I guess that's what I am doing. 

I graduate literally next year and have decided that instead of not getting paid here that maybe it's time to build a different life for myself. I love California and I probably wouldn't leave the state at all despite some of the setbacks here. I'm either leaving the country to staying here but right now, that doesn't feel possible especially given my lack of money. I looked into TESOL options and concluded I would be better off trying to live and Japan, even if it was temporary and just helping me pay off my student loans. 

,I've always wanted to go to Japan to visit. Never in my wildest dreams would I have considered living there but maybe this change of pace is good for me. First off, I need to live in an area where I don't need to drive in order to thrive. Secondly, I've always wanted to teach so teaching doesn't seem *that* bad for me, unlike others who use this type of job as a jumping off point into something else. Thirdly, if I really dislike it, my goal is to somehow scaffold off of the Japanese I do know and maybe try to get fluent enough to work in a different (and maybe even a more creative) field of work. I would love to do more pop culure-esque things to be involved in some type of Tokyo tourism or music and fashion work. I'm actually really passionate about those sorts of things but I don't know if I'd be barred as a foreigner and I know for a fact I need to be more fluent in order to obtain that line of work even if it were open to me. 

TESOL regardless is a good start and I intended to be a teacher anyway. Yes, I appreciate literature a lot more than grammar but I think it's a good way to be an ambassador maybe? Maybe I'm fooling myself and will get annoyed but I'm trying to go into this with a positive outlook. I think during my weekends there I would like to walk around and take really need architecture pictures and fashion street snaps while being dressed up myself. I *love* cities and Tokyo just looks like a beautiful city. I feel like yes, it's probably cold because people are so caught up in their own lives but in another sense, I kind of don't mind that. I hate when people but into my business and I just kind of want to exist peacefully. 

SO.. 2021 is a really promising year for me hopefully. 2021, is my graduation year. 2022 will be when I leave for Japan hopefully. So a fuckton of change is coming my way and I'm really looking forward to it. 

Without a doubt I'm nervous. I haven't been on a plane since I was 12 years old moving from Tennessee to California. I haven't been on a plan alone. I've never visited another country before. This is all going to be a completely new experience for me. I kind of want to vlog about my adventures there and really see if that area will feel like a second home to me for a little bit. 

It will really odd too to know that I'll be finished with school unless I am able to afford to pursue a masters degree. School has mostly been a consistent thing in my life. I quit for a little while and worked retail after dropping out and to be honest? I was absolutely miserable and felt like I couldn't do anything right..like ever. Putting myself back in school was literally the best decision I ever chose and I highly recommend it if you're unhappy with your current life circumstances. 

Yes, I have loans. Yes, I'm worried about that. But to me, it's the price of a car. A car deteriorated in value but your education is (hopefully) something you can carry with you for forever. I'm often worried that I chose a useless major. I don't know what to do with my degree other than teach and I don't have a lot of experience in anything else. However, I'm awful at math and science. I can't code. My memorization skills are garbage no matter how hard I try to work on them (the game SpaceChannel 5 is my way of trying to improve my memorization skills). 

I don't know what I would do outside of English. A lot of people often say I should have gone to art school. That I am very artsy and creative. However, anyone I personally know that has gone into the arts has always gotten screwed over and instantly regretting that choice. Because of that, I've always been very afraid of pursuing anything creative and tried to get a practical degree instead. I've been encouraged by multiple people to go into fashion things and I've literally had a TA job lined up with the film department and have been told by two people I should have been a theater/film major by professors in which I've always retorted, "Are you willing to invest in that venture because I can't afford it". lmao. Also, I've always gotten multiple hints to go back into Japanese but my university only offers it as a minor and I rather try to learn on my own rather than fork out university tier money. 

I definitely don't know what the future holds. 

What I DO KNOW is that I want to create more really sickening gyaru looks when I have time to do so. I was blog here more when I can. I want to create more videos. In general, I just want to create and have a good time in 2021. I know it's kind of scary to just up and say, "I want to make 2021 my year" given how fucking crazy 2020 has been. But I think I'm trying to say that 2021 is a year of immense change for me I feel. It's going to be the year I graduate and move onto a new chapter in my life. So it *needs* to be my year. There's so much paperwork and job application shit I have to do once this lockdown ends. I'm going to for sure be busy. I also want to spend as much time with my friends as I can before I just fly off to the other side of the ocean. 

I'm sad, my time very much so limited with them.... I had a feeling I was going overseas beforehand but I thought I had more time given that the pandemic hadn't occurred yet. I thought I'd have a good full year with them rather than a few months if things ever go back to normal. 

In all, 2020 wasn't even THAT bad for me. And that's such a privileged thing for me to say because I know for other people it was been awful. I am so lucky in many ways that my year wasn't awful. There were some inconveniences in my year but honestly? It wasn't so bad. I made lemonade out of lemons and tried hard to really keep a positive mindset and be kind to myself. But I said, that comes from a place of privilege and I realize that. 

That's why I praying everyone has a very safe, healthy, happy, and fulfilling 2021. After how this year has been? Everyone deserves it. Be kind to yourself and be kind to others. Keep in mind that this era will pass. Nothing is ever permanent and that has definitely been something I've taken away from this whole experience. 

Anyway, this blog is already super fucking lengthy but given that I had a whole year to cover, I guess that's understandable. 

I think this is the first "personal" post I've done in a while. I'll try to do more in the future and are much shorter than this. I promise. 

Happy holidays guys! Until next time~

(also a huge thank you to Lizzie (from https://www.hellolizziebee.com/) who made my amazing little signature. This so pretty and very me! -screams- Thank you again hun! I love this!