HappyBerry's Happy Birthday

Wow! I've been getting so lazy with updating my blog! So so so sorry guys! School has been super busy for me. It's only been 3 weeks and midterms are already coming next week! But let's talk about more happy things.

This past Monday, Jan 17th, I turned 22! WEEE! I had tons of fun with my lovely friends. We went shopping and I bought lots of stuff to celebrate. Among those things is a new TV! I know I bought a 22" before but I returned it and bought a 26" of the same brand and same model for the same price!!! So awesome. Good thing I bought the TV that day because it goes super well with the present that my friend brought me the next day: A PS3!!!!



And of course, being as awesome as he is, he also bought me Assassins Creed Brotherhood to go with it!



I LOVE MY FRIENDS SOOOO MUCH!! I can't wait to play with my PS3. But I will. Because the exams are right around the corner and I know if I start now I will not be able to stop playing! It will be just like that time when I got Kingdom Hearts 2 and I spend 36 hours straight without sleep to finish it. My best friend had always said I have very little self control. I totally agree with her lol. Therefore I will not play until after midterms! I look forward to finally playing the game so I can blog about it!

A Few Tips Regarding Leggings

Leggings have rapidly gained huge popularity over the past 2 years. There are so many different types of patterns and ways of wearing leggings. Although I am no fashion expert, I have noticed that there is a very common rule that people miss when they wear leggings: LEGGINGS ARE NOT MEANT TO BE WORN IN PLACE OF PANTS!!!

While most leggings are thicker and less transparent than stockings, leggings are still accessories. They are meant to be worn UNDER or WITH things to enhance the overall effect. Meaning one should not replace pants. Wearing legging with a shirt that doesn't go past your hip is like wearing stockings with nothing to cover it. It is a very embarrassing look for you and others around you.

In order to prevent this embarrassing situation, there are simple checks you can perform before leaving the house:
1. After putting on all your clothes, stand infront of a full length mirror.
2. Stretch your body by lifting both of your arms as high as you can.
3. Check to make sure your butt and crotch is not exposed.
If you have passed all of these, then you are ready to head out and have fun!

If you absolutely must wear leggings with a shirt that goes above your hips, there are a few exceptions that you can choose. For example, there are leggings that have jean patterns which will avoid the embarrassing look that one colored, patternless leggings will create. However, it is still generally discouraged.

I hope this was useful! :D

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

Over winter break, Steam was having its annual Christmas sale on games. So I decided to try out this game that my friends have been asking me to get. "Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale" is a game in which you play a young girl, Recette, and run a shop to try to pay off the debt that your father left behind. You have one week to pay off a certain amount of debt, of which the amount increases more than double every week. In order to successfully run the shop, you must learn to negotiate, adventure, and take advantage of the news you hear.

After finishing the main part of this game (paying off the debt), I have to say: I am absolutely in love with this game! I have always liked playing management games like "Cake Mania" or "Sim City" and such. This game not only allows you to sell stuff, it also allows you to learn to bargain with your customers (whose price limit changes as you get on their good side), learn about each character, and fight monster to get items for your shop! I loved the game so much that I started keeping an excel sheet on my customers to keep track of sales lol.

If you like management games, I would say this is the game for you. I hope you all have fun! Capitalism, ho!

Baby-Sitting for my Grandpa

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!

Tegami Bachi 1 and 2

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

Sengoku Basara 1 and 2

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?

Introducing an Adorably Funny Cat: Maru

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

Cats Playing Patty-cake

A cute and funny narrated video of cats playing patty-cake! :)