Today my Grandpa requested that I help him baby-sit his new puppy until I return to school from break. So I took on the task and took little Bobby home. Over the course of next week, I will attempt to train Bobby to do certain tricks that I have learned to teach other dogs while I was volunteering at Caring Town (we train abandoned dogs to become service dogs and help them get adopted). Wish me luck!
The first thing about Tegami Bachi that caught my eye was the beautiful art style of this manga. I've been wanting to read the manga since last year but I've been so busy with everything that it was forgotten.Since I'm out of school right now, I've had a lot of time to watch anime! So recently I finished Tegami Bachi season 1. After watching the first season of the anime though, I was a bit disappointed.
Tegami Bachi is a story revolving around a young boy, Lag Seeing, who strives to be the best Letter Bee. Letter Bees are mail delivery people who risk their lives fighting monsters called Gaichuus and traveling endlessly to make sure the hearts within the letters can be delivered to their destination. During the course of the story, Lag finds out many secrets of the government, why his mother was taken from him, and possibly what he really is.
First Season OP:
The beginning of the anime was very much like the manga and had a very captivating story that makes the readers want more. But in most of the season was filled with fillers and I almost gave up watching. Luckily, during the last few episodes, the story picked up it's speed again and leaves a cliffhanger for the second season, Tegami Bachi: Reverse.
Second Season OP:
The second season was a lot more exciting than the first season in that it revealed many secrets regarding the anti government organization Reverse and the birth of Niche, Lag's Dingo. Currently, the second season is still on-going on a weekly basis.
Tegami Bachi is full of all kinds of emotions. I found myself crying with Lag (who is a giant crybaby) in more than one occasion. Since most of the main characters are children (12-14) they are fill with silly moments. In one recent episode, Lag finally meets the famous Jiggy Pepper, a letter bee who makes express delivery on a motorcycle. Lag and the other boys idolized him so much that they imitated him in a very silly way! XD
Jiggy saying good bye to Lag:
The boys reenacting the scene (Lag pretends to be Jiggy while Conner plays the role of the motorcycle):
Besides all the emotion this anime was able to evoke from me, I was also captivated by all the songs they used for the opening and endings. They were all very soft and lovely and definitely reflected the mood of the anime (plus I've always had a likeing for Suga Shikao's music). All in all, I would reccomend browsing through the first season of the anime, watching the second season, and then reading the manga in addition to get the missing info and the latest bits of the plot. I hope you all will enjoy this series as much as I did! :D
Some of us videogamers might recognize Sengoku Basara as a videogame series revolving the Sengoku Era of feudal Japan. Though I have yet to play any of the games, I've been watching the anime series first and second season. I first heard about this series from an online webpage talking about women of Japan being captivated by this anime series and that it increased Date Masamune (an actual historical figure in the Sengoku Period) popularity with women due to his portrayal in this anime. Curious, I decided to watch the anime to see what it was all about.
OP to first season:
The first season of Sengoku Basara was about our hero's quest to stop Nobunaga Oda's ruthless plans to take over Japan. Within the first 3 minutes of the first episode, I was thoroughly confused by the Date Masamune's character. He rode on a horse that had strange pipes which made it look like a motorcycle. What confused me more was the fact that in between his dialogue in Japanese, he threw out little pieces of English like "Let's party!" or "Put your guns on!" This cracked me up a bit (I thought I accidentally clicked a dubbed version of the anime) prompted me to keep watching the series.
OP to second season:
This season, the heroes band together to fight Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who wants to conquer the land an allow only the strong to live (meaning only warriors and none of the regular citizens). After watching the first season, I immediately wanted to watch more of this series (especially since there where so many bishis in this series). The second season was a bit slower in the movement of the story (most of it was flash back or internal conflicts). But it was still interesting to find out more about the past of Maeda Keiji, who was a character who wanted peace without fighting from the first and second season.
Overall, this series had an interesting story plot and it retold the history of the Sengoku Period (to a very limit degree of accuracy). I loved the characterization of the characters: Date and his biker gang leader role, Sanada with his burning determination, etc. I really loved watching the character interact with each other like Sanada and Takeda. The two of them are like student and teacher. For some odd (and entertaining) reason, Sanada like to run at Takeda while questioning their ways and Takeda would beat him up everytime he answers. I guess everyone has their own way of learning lol.
Have you seen Sengoku Basara? My favorite character is Sanada Yukimura. Who is yours?
Remember my last video post with the cat who loves to fit himself into boxes (Look at the bottom of the post to see the link for the video)? Well, I found his youtube channel! Thurns out his name is Maru and he is a Scottish Fold. Watching Maru makes me want to have a cat too lol. Here's an introduction video about Maru. Have fun!
Here is the link to my previous post "Cat vs. Boxes": http://happyberryland.blogspot.com/2010/11/cat-vs-boxes.html
And this is Maru's channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/mugumogu
Yesterday my friend and I were talking about Japanese inventions and we touched on the topic of Japanese vending machines. We both thought that they were very convenient and interesting. So I went back to search for an old video I saw on Japan probe which talks about the different types of food and drink vending machines.
Got anymore interesting vending machines you know about? Comment below and I will try to look up a video or picture, then credit you for bringing it up! :)
All videos used in this post were found on the Japan Probe website.
A demaeki is a device that Japanese fast food delivery people install onto their mopeds and motorcyles. This device can balance the food properly so that it will not spill during the high speed twist and turns the vehicles make.
To test out how reliable these devices are, a Japanese TV show attached the device to a roller coaster with a bowl of ramen in it to see if there will be any spillage.
About a month ago I saw a twitter post from Michelle Phan (who RT another person) about a nail dryer that is in a shape of a monkey. It was so adorable looking that I immediately went to search for it online. Well, after 2 days of searching different websites (not continuously of course), I finally found it!
Although it looks like the monkey is blowing air out of his mouth, the air actually comes out of a little area by his tummy. You can dry about 2 nails at a time by pressing on the banana. I found it very useful for when I need some slight drying for my nail art. The drying process is super important because if the layers on the bottom is not dried and you put on another layer, it will become soft in the middle layers and very easy to smudge. There are probably a lot of better nail dryers out there but I'm pretty satisfied with this cute little helper! :)
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I received a shipment of beauty products. One of the things I love to do is to look at beauty products online and (if I have the money) order the ones that I like. My absolute favorite website to order beauty product is sasa.com. They are a really big chain of beauty franchise in Hong Kong and are super reliable. Ordering with regular shipping you can receive your shipment in about 21 days and fast shipping is about 1-2 weeks. You can find most of the products from Asia there for a cheaper price! I've ordered from them countless times and have never been disappointed.
So this shipment I got was mostly products to pamper myself with:
Bath salts:
Face Slimming Pack:
Knee Lightening Scrub:
Toner:
Roll on Eye Brightener:
Sasa also gives you free gifts with your orders:
Compact mirror with lights:
Strawberry foldable tote:
So here's everything I got! There is still another package coming in the mail and I will let you guys know about it as soon as I get it. Meanwhile I will be doing reviews for the product I bought as I use them. If you need a place to get Asian beauty products you should definitely visit this place : www.sasa.com
Last time after I posted the nail art for "Dot by Dot", I spilled wax all over my hands and had to remove all my nail polish! I was uber sad about the short life those nails had. But on the other hand, it was pretty good timing as that was the last weekend I had before I became super busy.
So anyways, the theme this time is stars! I had many little shiny gold star pieces for nail art but I never used them. So I decided to use those to make the pattern on my nails. The colors and polish used was base coat, white polish (2 layers), top coat, stars, and top coat again (2 coats).
This pattern is very easy and you can do it with any other shapes you have (hearts, circles, etc). These little stars can probably be bought online or at places that specifically sells beauty supplies. If you are in San Diego, you can get these supplies at Marukai's! They have so much nail stuff!
