Aino Minako-chan

mood: busy

music: "Guzen no Kakuritsu" Girl Next Door

I've been surprisingly busy the past two weeks or so. I'm leaving this weekend for a trip to Greece with kinomakoto, and I'm super excited. My laundry isn't quite done and my apartment probably won't get cleaned before I go, but I'm basically ready. Hurray! Excitement!

A few weeks ago, I was watching one of the millions of animal related TV shows in Japan, and they showed an edited version of a clip known as ( Battle at Kruger. )

Before Crisis, the Final Fantasy VII cell phone game, just came out for my current model of cell phone, so I said "What the hell!" and I downloaded it. ( Cut for those who don't really care. ^_^ )

( Cut for those who actually care about my previous poll... )

( And in completely random news... )

mood: loved

music: "FACE TO FACE" Luna Sea

Well, I had a good summer break. My mommy came down to Tokyo, and we went to the Tokyo Bay Fireworks, took a side trip to Karuizawa (where we shopped and Minako-chan burned the crap out of her shoulders), then Matsumoto (home of the truly lovely Matsumoto Castle), and finally returned to Tokyo in time for two more days of work (we just moved our offices, so our theme for the two days was "Hope you don't have to work, because there's no power", followed by "Hope you don't have to work, because there's no network"). We even saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which my mom understood surprisingly well (except for the part where she didn't know what a Padfoot was, or the part where she kept calling Alan Rickman "Professor Snapes", or the mind-boggling part where she confused Remus Lupin with Mad-Eye Moody). (Also, I should mention that the scene where Umbridge sacked Trelawney was made much more dramatic by the minor earthquake that caused the theater to rumble in displeasure. ^_^) Anyway, Mommy's back home now, so the apartment is big and lonely. (T_T)

While I was gone, some of my friends were doing a meme, so I thought I'd very belatedly run after the bandwagon.

1. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
2. Tag seven people to do the same.
3. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag whoever wants to do it.

1. For the life of me, I cannot correctly pronounce the following words: walrus, armageddon, mutant, or New Orleans. With "walrus", I drawl horribly, run the L and R together, and basically cut out the last syllable, so it ends up like "WAAW-r's". For "armegeddon", I'm just plain wrong. I pronounced it "ar-MED-ig-on" for the first 16 years of my life before kinomakoto told me that I was completely off. (I still get confused about which is the right way.) "Mutant" I pronounce without any Ts, so it comes out like "MU-n". And "New Orleans"... I used to live there, and after only about 4 years, I was drawling "N'awlins" like a 6th generation native. But when I moved away, I discovered that no one could understand what the hell I was saying. So I would have to force myself to say "New-Or-lins". But I was very conscious about it the entire time, and it was rather awkward, so it never came out smoothly. To this day, I am stuck in limbo where neither "New-Or-lins" nor "N'awlins" rolls off the tongue easily, so I always feel self-conscious whenever I talk about the city. (FYI, don't pronounce it "New-Or-leeens". It tends to annoy me.)
2. I can crack multiple joints on command (and do so often!). My wrist and finger joints I can crack fairly consistantly, but my shoulders and most any joint from my ankle down I can crack, loudly, whenever I want.
3. I've had white hairs since high school. Quite a few white hairs, actually, which makes my hair streaked in places. It doesn't bother me, though; I think it looks quite nice and I'm alway hesitant to dye it. And I could just be imagining it, but the white hairs seem to be more prominent around the area where I cut my head during my car accident a few years ago, which suggests that trauma really DOES create white hairs!
4. My favorite sandwich is pepperoni and potato chips. Nuke some pepperoni slices, put it on bread, and then add a layer of potato chips. I personally recommend plain Lays or Ruffles. Mmm, pepperoni sandwich!
5. I'm insanely picky about my toothbrush. It has to be a Colgate Wave toothbrush, compact head, soft bristles. Literally nothing else will do. They're somewhat difficult to find, so I end up buying them in bulk whenever I spot them. Also, for no apparent reason, I wear my toothbrushes out at twice the normal rate, so I tend to go through a lot of toothbrushes. Logically, it can't be good for my teeth, but I've only had one real cavity, so I must be doing something right.
6. One of my best comfort foods is kinako mochi (kinako being a soybean flour and mochi being a sticky ball of rice paste). My mom never really cooked Japanese food at home (although we almost always had white rice with dinner), but she would buy Japanese snacks fairly often, so I grew up on Pocky and arare and dried persimmons. But the thing that I really loved was kinako mochi, which she would often make for lunch. I have a distinct memory from childhood of watching a Rainbow Brite video and waiting for my mom to make kinako mochi. It's a good (and easy to find) comfort food.
7. I never wore pants as a girl. I never owned jeans until I was 11 (and that was for a theater costume), and I never started wearing pants and jeans regularly until I was 13 or so. I still wear flowing skirts and dresses a lot, which tends to make people think that I'm very dressy. (People will constantly ask me if I've got a date, when really I'm just going to the grocery store.) But I'll tell you a secret: the reason I like flowy skirts and dresses is simply that they're easier to wear. For me, pants and jeans are harder to move in; I can hardly kick my leg past my waist in most pants! IMHO, if I can't run or beat someone up in my clothing, there's a problem.