村上春樹

I finally got to meet Murakami Haruki one on one! I knew he had a home here in Hawaii and recently discovered he had an office at my university as well. I had no idea it was in the building I frequent the most!

OOTD & Makkuro Makkuro pop-up shop

serious face~

IT WAS SO HOT IN HAWAII TODAY! It reached up to the 90's (Fahrenheit) which we're not too used to in Hawaii, it's usually just in the high 80's. Today Monica and I went to visit and support our friend who participated in a pop-up shop called Makkuro Makkuro. 

Back in Hawaii!

mom snapped a pic right when i got out of the airport lol. 

ALOHA. It's been about 2 weeks since coming back to Hawaii from Japan. I have to say that I got back into the swing of things right away. It's like I never left. Then again, one year isn't THAT long when you think about it. I'm still trying to get adjusted to the time though. My sleeping patterns are way off.

My last day in Japan was a bittersweet one. It snowed the last day, which was surprising because the weather as of late at the time was mostly sunny and rainy. I felt like it was Kyoto's farewell gift to me.

The view from my bedroom window.

That day, I was dressed to properly adapt to Hawaii's warm weather once I landed (refer to first pic) So I really had to endure this last snowy day in Japan.

Saori, me, Sarah and Satoko

This was taken right before I went through security check at Kansai International Airport. Me with my my Japanese friend and my German friend. I really wasn't expecting anyone to come see me off so this was such a BIG surprise. They also gave me farewell presents. They also helped me out A LOT. I don't travel alone often so I'm not too familiar with airport procedures, rules and whatnot. I was expecting to pay the excess weight for my luggage but my Japanese friends were able to configure around my things where it JUST hit the borderline of the weight limit. I didn't have to pay anything!

JUST made it!

After going through security, I hopped on the escalator going down to enter our gates and as I was going down I could see my friends. Before I disappeared from sight we were all blowing kisses to each other and at the very end I flashed a "shaka". 

There more things that happened during my flight back to Hawaii but I won't bore you with details. I'll just leave off with saying that I'm glad I got to study abroad. It really opened my mind and heart to new things about the world, people and most of all myself. 

Looking down at Japan while our plane was flying away from it, I silently whispered "bye bye, Japan" to myself. Thank you for everything Japan, till we meet again <3

NOW that I'm back home though I plan on revamping up my blog and catching up on a lot of posts! I first need to buy a new external harddrive, there is absolutely no more space in my computer to do any editing of pictures or videos so I hope to buy that some time soon! Till then, thank you to my loyal followers ! 

one more month left!

HI EVERYONE! I'm so behind (as usual) with blogging but I've just been busy with preparing to move back to Hawaii! I have about a month left in Japan so things have gotten a bit crazy lately.

FEEL ENJOY in JAPAN day one

FIRST OF ALL:  

H A P P Y    N E W   Y E A R ! ! ! 

Man, it's crazy how fast time can seriously fly. I hope everyone had a great start to 2012!

top pic: Janis and I back in 2006 during our "pinklovesoxygen" days
bottom pic: Lani and I back in early 2011 <3

DECEMBER 28, 2011

The day finally came! My two best friends (pinksugarichigo & eat juice) were coming to visit me in Japan! It's been 3 years since we last hung out and what better place to reunite in than Japan? We've been planning this little reunion ever since my arrival in Kyoto.

They flew in at around 4:30pm and I was on an express train headed to Kansai International Airport! I was 30 minutes late and also very nervous and excited at the same time. 

I arrived at the airport and I started on my search for those two gals. When I finally found them we all ran to each other and greeted each other with high pitched squeals and hugs. We even started tearing and almost started crying but we retained our composure! 

Next thing to do was: HEAD BACK TO KYOTO!

Red Velvet

CINAMMON'S

Jac always talked about taking me to Cinnamon's in Kailua for breakfast and so we finally did. It's always fun driving to the windward side, going through H3 and arriving next to the beautiful Hawaii mountains and ocean! I always feel like a tourist whenever I go to that side.

Cinnamon's is known for their (delicious) Red Velvet Pancakes. It's a cute, as their sign says, family restaurant. Staff is super friendly and very homey. You get the choice to either sit inside or outside. We got sat inside where they have white christmas lights and even a huge gazebo where you can sit in to eat also!

More info on Cinnamon's HERE.

More pics of our Cinnamon's breakfast on my Flickr site,

on the right column.

We ordered the short stack which comes with 2, but it was pretty big! When we were slicing it up into triangle pieces the butter knife was pretty much sliding through it like...butter! It was so so so delicious. At the end of our meal we find out that this old couple sitting next to us offered us a 25% off coupon for our tab! How very sweet! We don't know why they gave it to us but we are very thankful.

nomming on the pancakes

FUNPIX HAWAII

Afterwards I thought "why not stop by FunPix today? We're already out on this side of the island and my purikura stamp card is filled AND their new machines should be up!" Yes! their new machines ARE up! I was like a little kid in a candy store. The only problem was, my best friends aren't here with me on the island to enjoy this (Janis, Monica, Lani). AND to my sadness the machine I was MORE excited about (the Rilakkuma one) was out of order. The owner of the shop said they are waiting for one more part :(. But I was still excited to take the Mickey Mouse one! For some reason there was always a difference in Japanese Disney and American Disney. Call me crazy, but there just is...to me. There's just something about Japanese Disney that seems vibrant, alive, fun and very creative. Hmmm okay moving on.

These machines aren't your typical 'go-into-a-mini-room-and-take-6-to-8-shots-then-get-about-2-to-3-minutes-drawing-on-it' type, these were what I like to call "quickie" booths. I also noticed that newer purikura machines are built with a automatic 'make-your-eyes-look-extra-girly-and-huge' effect! Jac did not sit well with this! Lol.

Here's the inside of the machine (the Rilakkuma one is the same type of machine also). You take the pics there and you design there, all in one spot. It's very fast paced so you better know what you're doing!

I'm definitely going again (hopefully with my girl friends) and hoping this time the Rilakkuma one is up!

For those of you who live in Hawaii,

more info on the purikura shop HERE.

Me being very excited for the new machines!

pinklovesoxygen 2010: Day One

Hi all! As promised, I will be trying to blog more! I have a feeling this post will be a lengthy one, so I applaud whoever gets through this. lol.

PINKLOVESOXYGEN 2010. What's the deal with that title? Well, let me give you a little history on that. Back in 2006, a good friend of mine who is very popular on the net, Janis, wanted to start a, line I guess you could say, of graphic design artworks called Pink Meets Oxygen. This was at first. Her and I were very good friends at the time and I was into graphic designing and video editing as well. We hung out (A LOT) and she pretty much stayed over at my place (A LOT, we were practically living together) and decided to form a partnership. We both loved creating and our creative juices were flowing! Janis then decided to change the name to Pinklovesoxygen and it just stuck. We sort of made a name for ourselves for a good amount of time with self-made MV's and also mini web-isodes. We had a good feeling this was going to last for a while and we were also planning to publish a photobook. After our trip we took to New York in December of 2006 we both found ourselves men who we are still with today. I guess you could say that we went our separate ways but decided to just call it a hiatus. Till now I get random people who recognize me and Janis from our MV's and always ask"Hey, are you that girl from Pinklovesoxygen?!" It's quite flattering but somewhat embarrassing. I don't know why, I'm not good with compliments. Makes me want to stick my head in the ground like an ostrich.

We've always meant to reunite but we just never had the time. Then she moved to California. Now she's back for vacation and we're not wasting or regretting any day we have to spend together!

SO ONTO DAY ONE...

07122010

Met up with Janis at her mom's place where her mom cooked us some good old filipino home cooked meal! It was so so scrumptious and made me so full, I wanted to unbutton my highwaisted shorts just to eat more.

Janis and I then started relaxing drinking on some Sakura Black hot tea and watching "The Beatles First US Visit" swooning over George Harrison and John Lennon.

It was great seeing her mom, she always made me feel so loved. I especially feel loved when her mom goes out of the way to see me at my work place just to say hi! It makes me feel like they are truly my family. It made me sad when her mom said to me "It almost feels like yesterday when we went to California..." (I went with Janis' family to California back in 2006) Just being at their place, seeing lots of familiar items and photos with me in it made me tear. I do consider them family.

After reminiscing, Janis and I decided that we really needed to get a move on on our adventures together, so we decided to venture downtown and take a much needed purikura session together! The last and ONLY time we ever took purikura together was in Japantown in California back in 2006. We were both noobs at it at the time so our pics were very bare to any kind of purikura drawings and whatnot. This is Janis and her discovery of oil blotting paper. She always thought there was one kind of oil blotting paper: the one with the powder. Mine is a Japanese brand and it's meant for sweat & oil. She was soooo amazed with it! I actually have video of her talking about it, I'll post that later.

We're done! I also decided to try some of the falsies she brought back with her that she ordered from ebay. Not the greatest quality, but it was about $3.00 for 40 pairs of lashes! Great for practicing and for just using without caring too much about them. What do you think? Can you see them? It was also pretty funny because coincidentally, we were both wearing high waisted shorts and the SAME circle lenses (oh yeah and same falsies too). So she decided to throw on some sexy red lipstick while I threw on innocent pink lipstick. We were ready to go! I guess we were even more excited because I also had my new DSLR camera to play with! She was amazed with the quality and is even thinking of getting the same camera! She would totally match with the pink version!!

Me, Auntie (Janis' mom), Janis

PURIKURA TIME! Just *some* of our purikura. Yes some. Hey now, we're gonna take a YEAR'S worth of purikura if we have to! She's only here for 2 weeks! When we got there it was pretty busy (for a Monday too) but as always the guy who runs the place is always so nice to me. He pretty much sees me as a regular :P haha. Discount? bwa hahaha. I'm more excited now because he gave me the heads up that they will be getting 2 new machines! I can't wait! So after 4 sessions, we decided to call it quits (for now) and head to Don Quijote and Ala Moana for some eats and window shopping. Of course before leaving we take pics and we dance it up in my car. I'll upload the vid next post too.

Janis and her awesome wedges!

@ Don Quijote for some taiyaki

@ Ala Moana for some macarons, Spiral Girl, Shirokya and F21 shopping.

Guava

Green Tea