The Language Struggle

Hello dears! I had such a relaxing weekend, so relaxing that it was hard to bring myself to work this morning lol I had such a bad case of the Mondays. I want to go straight home after work, but I need to hunt down a fall coat for when it starts to get into the 50s and early 60s. For some reason I don't have an in between jacket which is a necessity here.

Anywhoooo, I'm trying to actively think about what language I want to study and believe me when I say the struggle is so real right now with me picking which one. My goal is to start studying by the Spring or Summer at the latest. so it's good that I'm thinking about it now. I'm still not sure if I'm studying just for fun or for work related goals. This distinction would greatly influence what I end up picking. Here's the languages I'm interested in studying:

Spanish
My first language that I ever studied; I learned it for two years in high school. I think it's a beautiful language and I love the way it sounds. Spanish came very easily to me, and I think it's a good language to know and very useful. I can understand Spanish, but I've lost a lot of my speaking. I can remember the basics. Boba speaks Spanish, and I would love to speak it with him on a regular basis. He was born in the states, but lived with his family in Mexico (his father moved from Mexico to the states as an adult) for about six years when he was younger then moved back to the States. He still has family there; Mexico is also a country I would love to visit.

Japanese
I started studying in 2006, and I'm at an Intermediate level. I sort of have a love hate relationship with Japanese. Most of my interests involve Japanese, so it's really useful for me to know for my geeky/nerd endeavors. At the same time, my speaking is not as good as my listening, reading, or writing. A few of my besties speak Japanese as well, so I definitely have people to practice with. I think for me it's a question of whether to maintain the skills I have or actively study.

Mandarin
I started learning Mandarin when I lived in China (wow I can't believe it'll be two years soon since I taught there!). I could read some of the Chinese characters because I know Kanji which takes from them. Mandarin and I just clicked and I think that I can also do a lot professionally with the language.

Korean
I'm becoming more interested in Korean culture and would love to visit Seoul. I also think that it would be refreshing to start a new language. I've also heard that if you know Japanese, Korean will be a lot easier because some things are similar. I also have a bestie that's Black and Korean, and we're interested in learning together.

That's it for this post! Are any of you studying a language at the moment? If not, which language would you choose? Also if anyone's studying any of these languages please let me know! It would be cool to have a language partner^^ I think once I figure out my intentions regarding learning it'll be easier to decide what to go with. Thanks for reading!

Finally, In Love Again Prologue Review

Hi loves! Happy hump day^ ^ I hope you week has been going well. I'm personally super ready for the weekend. I wanted to take the chance to review the prologue of Voltage's new game that came out. Detailed review under the cut!

 September 9, 2014

You suffer an unfortunate accident and end up getting fired to make matters worse it's your birthday. While moping in bed your receive an invitation delivered by an attractive, younger mailman. Your mother sends you an invitation for a singles event. Your younger ex-coworker attempts to embarrass you in front of everyone by commenting on your termination and your age. To your surprise, five of the hottest guys are interested in you.

The Guys of Finally, In Love Again

• Aki: Nice and polite
• Syuichiro: Slightly cranky and arrogant. Has a smart mouth
• Yoh: Flirty and energetic 
• Sousuke: Calm and cool
• Kikuchi: Thoughtful

I am happy to say that it was a little more difficult to pull key traits for some of the guys, and that's not a bad thing. It shows that Voltage is creating complexity with their characters. I can tell that each guy has a different side without it being too obvious what that other side is. Go, Voltage!

Maid Cafe Visit and Food Run

Hey cuties! I've been well, but it's been crazy busy in a good way. I've been out every night this week kinda late. I just returned from a lovely tarot date with one of my besties ^_^ I don't see this late night trend changing anytime soon as I have another hangout tomorrow. After that it'll be Friday and I've also been invited to something as well, then the weekend lol No rest for me^^ I'm sure my social life will die down the colder it gets because that's what usually happens in NYC. Everyone hibernates and re-emerges for Spring. Summer is pretty much gone and I will admit I'm a little sad since it's my favorite season. At least I've got Fall! I wanted to share with y'all my recent trip to a maid cafe last month!

I knew that there was a Maid group in NYC due to a Youtuber I follow that participates in it. I heard that the group are available for events. I was visiting there Facebook page and saw they actually had a cafe! I've always really wanted to go to a maid cafe and a butler cafe. I literally called Tiffany two seconds later and asked if she would go with me. She was super pumped and said yes immediately! Tiffany is my frilly friend who accompanied me to the opening of the new Lolita brand store Baby the Star Shines Bright opening. You can read about that adventure here. The exterior and interior of the cafe was super cute! Sorry I forgot to take pictures of the inside due to my hunger haha It was really cute inside they even had a nice anime/manga goods section.

いらっしゃいませ！

They had really had food items with adorable names like Doki Doki Beef Bowl and Nyan Nyan Curry combo. I decided to go with chicken cutlet curry and a strawberry smoothie bubble tea with tapioca. The rice came in the shape of a heart! How freakin adorable is that^^

Next, I suggested we grab dessert at Eight Turn Crepe which is a place that sells Harajuku style crepes. I was surprised when Tiffany told me that she hadn't been before. You know I had to fix that! I heard some bangin music playing as we got closer. I realized there was a DJ spinning some really good music. She was hittin up the old school R&B.

She had me in there dancing, I tell you!

My delicious crepe

Tiffany took me to this place that's Alice in Wonderland themed and sold delicious tea. Their tea menu is huge. It's a book with about 10 or 12 pages front to back of different kids of tea. I feel in love! I've been back several times and took Boba last week. He really enjoyed it as well. You get your own pot of tea, it can be small or large and it's priced really well. They have food, scones, and desserts.

Their huge book of tea

I decided to go with the Red Fruits since I love red berries. I've since had their Chocolate Chai, Symphony, and Rooibos Phoenix. My favorite is the Rooibos Phoenix since I love really sweet things. It's a red bush herb base tea with honey, caramel, and vanilla and you can have it served with milk and honey.

Red Fruits black tea

We walked past a cupcake ATM

I really love living very close to NYC. There's so many cool things to see and door here which is very different from where I grew up. NYC even had a Harajuku Fashion Walk on this past Sunday. Everyone looked super cute and I really want to participate next year. I'll be writing about more of my adventures exploring new places in the city, so look out for that. Thank you for reading!

Couple Outfits or Nah?

Hello baby loves! I hope you're having a great week. I'm personally super ready for the weekend. My last few nights have been spent dreaming up outfits. And not only outfits for me, but Boba as well. You may have guessed it; I'm swooning over couple outfits! I kinda like them, fine I'll admit it I really really realllyyy like couple outfits which is kinda awkward because they're very popular in some Asian countries and considered pretty obnoxious here in America. My mom (who's technically my grandma) told me that couples her age and older wore matching outfits all the time when she was growing up. I think that they're super cute when they're well done.

I first heard of couple outfits when I watched the Taiwanese drama Devil Beside You. I thought it was really adorable when Yuan Yi and Qing Zi wore purple matching jackets on one of their dates. I also saw couples wearing matching shirts like this and shoes when I lived in China, but I didn't know that the trend was also popular in South Korea and Japan. I'll admit that wearing a matching shirt or complete outfit isn't really my thing, so I never thought about doing it. I ran across this article on Drama Fever a few nights ago and fell in love with the trend all over again. There's even a married couple in South Korea that has a clothing brand for matching couples called Ggumddakji which is slang for inseparable couple. I liked quite a few of the outfits and liked how you could see each couples' style. I decided to do a search and see if I could find anything that I would like to wear with Boba. I found an article from a blog I follow called "A Texan in Tokyo," in one post she talks about her secret love of couple wear, but how it was awkward at first. It was refreshing to read another American's perspective; I really liked how she and her husband started off small with matching watches.

I decided to see if my favorite Asian fashion website, Yesstyle, would have any items, and lo and behold they have a whole section devoted to couple outfits! I really like the style in the picture below. The matching shirt/dress combo is a nice take on the couple outfit trend. This set can be found on Yesstyle here.

This couple below has got to be my favorite from the Drama Fever article. I feel like you can tell that they are a couple, but it's not over the top. I like that they match, look super stylish, and you can see each person's individual style.

These photos have convinced me to give it a try. I don't think it will be too hard to convince Boba to wear a couple outfit with me. We've done it accidentally before, I have a red plaid shirt and he has a blue one. We both met up for a date one day and realized were had wore our plaid shirts lol He also dressed like me once on purpose, too lol He saw that I had wore the red plaid shirt again, so he put on his blue one. I'll take pictures if we end up doing it!

What do you think about couple outfits? Would you do it with your partner or nah? I've decided that I'm willing to give them a try despite the fact that they aren't so popular here. Let me know your thoughts! Thanks for reading^^