Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s Time of Eve is one of my favorite animations of the decade so far, though I do prefer the series, I think. I don’t know how I missed the Kickstarter, though I’ve grown tired of them and it brings the Time of Eve release at the same price of the Japanese release. Sighs. Japanese products.
But look at this beauty~
The ones offered through Amazon, do not offer shipping to my location :( but The Time of Eve Shop does… at a kinda expensive price. Nearly $20 USD in shipping!
OH, man~ the things one has to do to get Marit Larsen albums. Spark wasn’t that hard, since it somehow made its way to Amazon, but it seemed so unlikely that When the Morning Comes would show up there again, so I went hunting. It was not a fruitful web-hunt with everyone telling me they did not do international shipping.
More power to friends! Way to go, Julz~
Marit’s 4th album has finally joined its siblings. It also means Marit’s the only 2014 album I had actively physically purchased so far, beating my 2013 record when I only got BiBi’s Unlock as a present (more yay friends!). However, I did just recently physically purchased Calle 13’s Multiviral considering it was my album of 2014. I’m surprised myself.
I’m a little sad that most (if not all) my purchases are digital.
This is a thing of beauty. Too bad I don’t use iPads… and I don’t know any of my friends who use them, except for my aunties. And for a possible new option, I was looking at the Nokia phones, but someone told me Samsung’s are resilient. Survived a massive rain, they said. Not that it rains much down here.
FiftyThree has designed this stylus pencil [that comes in walnut and graphite] that is actually pretty cheap. Between the prices of $60-$50 USD. It’s good for sketching, outlining, writing, coloring and blending- it does seem to do basically the same as a Galaxy Note, which my cousin (and a friend) loves to use, but I guess the iPad gives you greater space to work. Plus, I suppose the stylus would be more sensitive, or am I wrong?
Check out the video.
I ran into this article in Japanese that talked about the heat wave in Japan and how the shaved iced business has increased (to like $40B USD worth or 4000億円) with a brief mention of Yu-chan. Because Yu-chan LOVESSSSSSSS shaved ice. Even has her own machine at home, and writes monthly articles and whatnot, and apparently that’s a thing with other young women who eat their shaved ice while walking back and forth.
Yu has also talked about the perfection that is the shaved ice parlor in Taiwan. Dude, she’s serious. Taiwanese shaved ice is serious business. My Mandarin teacher told me he missed them because the raspadillas [1] here are so wishy-washy. Then I saw Taiwanese shaved ice.
The mango shaved ice that I saw in one of the brochures is still in my to-eat list. but I’m still scared of going over there in the summer season, because I’m a total city wuss that can’t take extreme weathers. I’m one of those lucky ones that can only take temperatures between 14-27 Celsius without complaining. LOL
My main grip about Korean is that if I wanted to type it, I had to customize my keyboard so I knew which syllable was in which position, instead of typing gibberish the first time I tried to use it. LOL The same thing is happening with me and Russian. Every time I try to type something, I have to press every single key because I can’t find them. xD
So I was looking for a LED-based keyboard that would do just that. Change layout every time I would switch keyboard settings on my computer. And Apparently I wasn’t the only person in need of one (and I’m too late to the party). Someone pointed me towards Art. Lebedev Studio, who happened to be a studio based in Moscow, Kiev and New York.
Because only non-English speakers, or multilingual people would need to come up with this sort of gadget. The concept was solid, and apparently all the keyboards are sold-out, even though the “popularis” version (so the compact one) is priced at 797 Euros or $1086 USD. xD
The concept for the Tactus one looks cool, though, I’ve never warmed up to digital displays in the form of typing devices. I HATE typing on smartphones and tablets.
I know that except from my 5th Year Anniversary Wiki Update [1], things have been usually pretty quiet on the Yu front. It usually is pretty slow during these months, as Yu’s activities tend to pick up by August all the way into December, January and February.
Though my fandomess (that’s not even a word) has diminished, Yu still has a special place in my fangirly heart. I would totally be giddy with a new movie, and specially with starring on a new jdrama (as a lead, not guest). I’m not as an ardent fan of Yu’s passion for shaved ice, so those books are missing from my collection, as well as her first few photobooks. But as you can see, I’ve kept on supporting her any way I could.
I’m still waiting to catch Vampire. The Shunji Iwai Festival team on Weibo told me it would be “soon” when I get to catch it on a proper online channel, so I’m crossing my fingers.
I do miss that doki doki feeling I used to get when this fandom started. Maybe I’ll re-watch Osen to recapture that feeling. LOL
Look what I found! It turns out that Yu’s photobook Kaiten TEBURU ha Mutsukashii, which had her followed by photographer Ivy Chen in Taiwan doing their Taiwan Cafe rounds, will be translated to traditional Chinese in a new release simply titled Taiwan’s Girl (台灣的女孩), to be out on December 27th this year. I doubt this will show up on any other online websites~
I’ve never liked Barbie. I’ve never seen a true system engineer Barbie, or a true Barbie chef (don’t argue with me, that Barbie is a home cook!), or a Barbie restaurant administrator — I’ve never seen a Barbie that resembles any of the women of my family (except for my younger cousins)… let alone me. I have never been represented by a Barbie doll, so it’s all the same to me that the Barbie store in China had to close shop.
And no, I don’t think it’s entirely the fault of Barbie being “too strong” for Chinese girls. Sure, some Chinese girls (and boys) may grow up like princesses (or princes) in moderately rich households. But middle to middle-low-income families would still want their daughters to help out at the family’s business as well as getting good grades, or in the case of the very lucky ones just be given the best to reach excellency [1]. Putting your kids through school with extra-curricular activities, it’s a sacrifice… so over-paying for Barbie products would be pointless.
Women today, they can go out and do anything,” her grandmother said. “They can do big things.
And I know the example above may sound like a privilege Chinese girl, but her family’s back story isn’t that of a rich family, considering the girl’s grandmother made her mother work to put her two uncles through their studies. Sounds like a lot of hard work to me.
I have been looking… for years and years for that perfect beanie [1] I saw Yu Aoi wearing on her Travel Sand book. I’ve looked at thousands and thousands of knitted hats of all types, but none has ever struck me the way that beanie had on those beautifully printed pages. The colors, the material… the amount of the openness of the weave, it was perfect.
Slouchy, with ears, pompoms, tails, tails with ears and pompoms… the ones with scarfs knitted out of the beanies… my collection might not be vast, but it’s certainly varied. I’m also terribly cheap, so I really can’t see myself paying $45USD for the Mango Knit Beanie with beads or worse… £216 for this Inverni Monnier Freres cashmere beanie — as awesome as they are.
This search for the perfect beanie is becoming an OCD of mine. I need help.
Urgent help.
Yup. I finally bought Kyou, Konogoro (今日、このごろ。) — roughly translated to Nowadays, Lately. — which I had put off getting for years AND YEARS because… there’s a lot of text. But, damn. I was seriously missing out. There’s not many photos for the book, but there’s TONS of goodies for Yu-chan fans. A LOT of information (movie facts about Yu’s shooting projects, dates, movie suggestions, books she’s given or received, a sorta detailed work around to some of the magazine work she’s done, etc.) — In short, loads of great information for her Wikipedia page. xD
Having to tell you that my Chinese Mandarin classes are paying off for the Japanese reading. Ha! I’m just gonna have to go through all the text bit by bit. Coz seriously, there’s a lot.
