Hi guys! So I've been quiet lately, and I'm not done blogging about my running away to Japan for the winter, although I'm back now. And I've come home to a kind of madhouse.

I'm in my final year of university, so it's all systems go so far as desperately trying to think of a future for mysef goes, and although there's at least 100 things I really want to do, the fact is, there's only so many things I can think about at once, and as it happens something I really love is marketing and advertising. Completely unrelated to my degree but so what?

So I'm applying to a company for my future, and they have given me a challenge in return. My challenge is to become an internet celebrity.

Kind of mad? VERY mad. I'm sitting here, trying to find the time to even think about this while I study for the million tests involved in life as a Japanese student. But nevertheless, your future is important, right? You should always be dreaming and thining of your own future and what to do with it, so I'm not going to just sit here and go 'but I don't have time', I'm going to find the time.

So I've started a facebook page called KOBOSHI London. This page is a Project which is sort of like streetsnaps and fashion blog mashed together, I go and find people who are stylish and interesting, or places which are cool, and I take pictures of myself there. As you can tell from the name, it's super London-centric and I hope it'll be interesting not only to people who live in London and know the places I go, but to people who are just interested in seeing a little bit of this ridicuously awesome city that I live in.

I've also created some videos, with a little help from my friends, they're ridiculous and you can 100% tell that I'm actually the worlds worst public figure, but please watch them anyway!





And if you like my idea, please do pass it on, blog about it ot tweet about it, tumblr it or email it to your mother/granmother/sister/cousin/ANYONE.

It's kind of strange, sure, and I sure as fuck look really stupid, but I'm having fun! And I hope people really will find my idea funny and maybe a little bit useful.

PS. Sorry for being so quiet lately, I've been flying, studying, working and filming shit like this.

It's past new year now, but I thought I'd blog about my Christmas anyway! I spent my Christmas day as far away from family, Christmas pudding and christmas trees as you can get, so maybe it'll be interesting to read even if it is January now.

Our flat in Tokyo isn't super tiny, but it is when you think about the fact that seven people live there (and the kitchen table only has five chairs)! Nevertheless, the large part of the occupants of Shinjuku Garden Place decided that we wanted to celebrate Christmas all together like the weird Brit-turned-Tokyo-ite family we are. So we threw tinsel, glitter and paperchains all over the kitchen, dressed in kigurumi pyjamas and proceeded to spend the whole day lazing around watching Christmas movies.

However, we'd be idiots not to do any exploring into Japanese Christmas, especially when the Japanese idea of Christmas is so funny. Being a majority Buddhist/Shinto country, Christmas is merely a commercial holiday, not a religious one. People celebrate Christmas for the spirit of fun and for the sake of buying children presents and going on dates. So Christmas Eve is date night for Japan, boys take their girlfriends to expensive restaurants and give them presents. Then on Christmas day, children are given gifts too. They also eat fluffy white cake as Christmas Cake, and believe it or not order KFC! That's some clever marketing that's happened right there...

Anyway, we decided that ordering KFC was brilliant idea and that Christmas Cake was an even better idea, so we ordered both!! On Christmas morning Alice and Ellie went (very hungover/still drunk from the night before) to go and get our KFC from Shinjuku.

( HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS )

Nyan.

Tokyo is cold but fabulous.

Now anyway, as some of you saw on my twitter (and yelled at me about a lot...), I spent my Christmas Eve doing something kinda special; I went to Alice Nine's Christmas handshake event for their new single 虹の雪 Niji no Yuki (Rainbow Snow).

I had only found out about the event the night before, by accident.

Me and Alice had been in Shibuya playing, and I was desperate to go to Tower Records, it's my favourite CD shop in the world. So we went in and I was admiring the huge Alice Nine display on the second floor. There was glitter and rainbows all over it, seriously, Tower Records knows how to advertise to Alice Nine fans. I picked up one of the CDs to read the song titles, and realised that it had a big yellow sticker on the front saying "EVENT! Buy all three types for event." I told Alice that ahhh wouldn't it be so cool to get to go to an Alice Nine event but.... probably it wouldn't be until much later in the month so even if I bought all the CDs I wouldn't be able to go. So I put the CD down and wandered off to look at AYABIE CDs...

Then as I was wishfully flicking through albums, Alice came running back to me with a flyer in her hand, jumping up and down. She was all, THE EVENT IS TOMORROW! YOU SHOULD GO.

For real. Alice Nine's handshake event was the next day. What would you do? I know exactly what I would do. I know exactly what I did do. I grabbed all three copies of that damn CD and marched straight to the checkout.

Then I swear my heart never slowed down until the next morning when I ran back to Tower Records for the actual event. I went back on my own because Alice stayed resolutely in bed, saying that if she got up and came with me, she would probably buy all the Cds so she could come too, she wouldn't be able to stop herself. So I was pattering along by myself, wearing in my EKAM jacket, which is the softest, most beautiful leather jacket in the world ever, and socks and sneakers with my hair done looking kind of out of place being by myself and super tall and foreign... But I found the extremely long queue all the way up the stairs of Tower Records and joined the end. The girls just in front of my were super cute, chattering together about the presents they had got for their favourite members. Seeing as... I had only found out about it the day before... I hadn't even writen them fanmail, but such is life.

The wait was fairly long, but considering how nervous I was, it's probably a good thing because Japanese is not easy for me to speak coherently when I'm so nervous my stomach was churning and I'm going to take a firm guess Alice Nine only understand Japanese, so it was necessary I be able to say something... Why did I pick probably the most intimidatingly beautiful band ever to meet?

When they opened the event area and everyone filed in, I wasn't even inside the room, the queue was so long, and it went way way back up the stairs behind me too; lots and lots of people had bought all three types for Tower Recors!! (I found out later Alice Nine came very high on the singles chart, so they should with that many girls buying ALL THREE types of their single...)

( More about Alice Nine... )



...And died.

Then ran off to Shibuya 109 to fall into Ellie's arms and cry a little bit.

Meeting Alice Nine was amazing and I hope they maybe possibly had a good impression of me as a foreign fan. I'm sorry I didn't get to go to any of their live shows while I was here, but I went to a fuck ton of other lives and that definately made up for it. More about them later... And chillin at Modern Pirates, spending money I don't have and running aorund Tokyo like an actual lunatic...

OK quick update but I need to write down what I've been doing the past few days (with the help of my twitter timeline) before I fucking well forget what happened when and where and whatever the fuck because my memory is like a sieve and I've spent too much of it drinking and running around at 4am.

OK so on the 21st (I think...) I went with Alice to BREAKERZ Christmas live at Tokyo Dome City Hall! She is like the biggest BREAKERZ fan ever and is so cerebu among BREAKERZ fans now because she goes to like every event, prancing around with her super blonde hair and pale skin dressed all hade and shit. So creeping along with her I kind of felt like I was being pulled through a whole new WORLD of fangirlism. (and I've experienced alot of fangirlism in my time yo)

Anyway, we bought out tickets from a girl who had drawn too many in the fanclub lottery so we had fanclub tickets:



Ohhh shiny FC tickets.

Alice dressed me up for the live in all her merch she WASN'T already wearing....



And then seeing as that didn't match my clothes I also stole her MA*RS shorts and her socks... becuase they're cool.

It was freeezing so after we waiting in the merchendise queue so Alice could get a Christmas BREAKERZ towel (because everyone needs more BREAKERZ towels...) we ran off to Denny's. Denny's is this super riduclously yummy famiresu type place which is warm and sells pasta and stuff. Alice spread all her make up out on the table and glammed up not very discreetly at all. It's ok, we weren't the only BREAKERZ fans in there doing that. There were other girls touching up too.

( READ MORE ABOUT BREAKERZ AND ROYZ AND PLAYING AROUND )

Would you believe I just had issues finding my own blog in my browser history? I type in 'koboshi' now everything BUT my blog comes up, twitter seems to be at the top of the list. It definatly gets updated the most - such is the nature of twitter, I suppose!

Would you believe, this is the first time I've actually sat down in front of my laptop with no impending deadline to complete, no overbearing issues coveting al my time, no mad rush to finish an essay or prepare a presentation or learn Japanese at super speed. Well, the first time since term began at the start of October. That's a lot of dead days on my blog, and while I've been away I have seriously considered switching to a different blog hosting site. Lifejournal has been my big time friend for a long long time, but in the end I've decided to stick around for now. But look out in the future for big changes for KOBOSHI.

Anyway, back to me finally sitting down in front of my laptop devoid of reposbilities or deadlines.

It just so happens I'm sitting in front of it at a desk in a tiny room in an adorable appartment complex in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo.

I've quit my student and work life in London for three weeks to come visit all my friends in Tokyo. Seeing as in London right now, my friends/social time is non existant, I've decided to come to the people and the social life I've missed so much! It's costing me more than I earn/want to contemplate (the exchange rate is actually double right now), but it's worth it, honestly.

My flight here was a nightmare - travelling alone is only fun when you have the freedom of finances and accessable phone support - when you're a poor student running on a tight schedule with some serious language restrictions, prblems occur often. I arrived in Tokyo Narita airport aftter flying for over 13 hours (and hopping over quite a few problems), only to find that the JR (Japan Rail) line out of Narita airport was down due to an accident. Several options present; take the Narita Express (NO, TOO EXPENSIVE DAMNNIT), take the SkyLiner (NO NO NO, EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE DAMNIT), or take a bus (BUS? DO NOT WANT). Eventually, after standing in the station looking lost for a L.O.N.G time I decided to try asking someone if I could take the private Keisei Line with my Suica card (A Suica card is like an Oyster card in London, but for Tokyo trains! Super 便利), and the lady said YES OF COURSE YOU CAN! Awesome, set. So I go down onto the platform. The train arrives, and I'm just about to get on, when the announcer is all "You must have a reservation to use this service!" WAT, NO I DON'T HAVE A RESERVATION!!??!!??

Then this super cute guy came over to me and asked in English if I was OK. I could see he really needed to get on this train, but he was super kind to stop and ask. I sort of splurged in half English/Japanese to him about only having a Suica card, was there a train I could take without the JR? And he was like "YEAH SURE, JUST GO ALONG TO THE NEXT PLATFORM!!"

wtf Japan, please make your train system more clear, I'm really dumb ok, it's not useful to be this fucking complicated, I can't cope, my Japanese isn't good enough.

So anyway, I managed to get back into the central Tokyo train system, which I'm pretty good with already, Yamanote Line! I love it so much (it's the line with Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Akihabara, Ueno - ALL THE FUN PLACES - on it. Yes Akiba/Ueno is fun, don't diss).

Anyway, I'm so happy to be with my friends again, lack of communication (I have no phone here), is also chotto yabai and they actually all thought I had died on my way from the airport into Tokyo. Alice was so stressed out she cried when I actually fell in the door. But I'm done with my little (massive) rant about the nightmare end of my nightmare journey to Tokyo. I'm actually here now.

Today I went with Ellie and Alice to Shinjuku to order chicken and cake for Christmas day. Christmas in Japan is fucked up and awesome and you eat KFC and eat sponge cake. You get it deliviered to your motherfucking house. Like a boss.

So we ordered that and went to purikira in Kabukicho which is one of my favourite places in the world as of today. I can go there and not feel at all too kirakira/hade. There are hostboys EVERYWHERE and they just make random comments at you and you can yell back at them or run away - your choice, girls are pattering about in like the most EPIC outfits covered in bling, you aren't cool unless you have super sugi-mori-mori-sugi to fuck hair and it's just so much fun, I don't even know how to explain. Plus I've missed purikura so much.



( Read more!! )

KOBOSHI

OK so, I appear to have forgotten that I own a blog and failed to update in forever, despite doing a million awesome things and going back to university and doing KOBOSHI and whatever whatever ya ya my life is so insane.

However, this was not the case! I never forgot about you, dear blog! I just happen to have so much stuff to do every day that by the time I want to post something, there isn't time to do it. So, regrettably I have switched largely to the less wordy, more pretty alternative of Tumblr and to make up for the wordiness I love so much I splurge on Twitter alot.

I'm despierately trying to think of suitable news updates... I'm running around between Japanese classes trying to remember a billion different words to do with education, 'expression' and... whatever else we're translating articles on? And I'm trying to get down a good title for my ISP (dissertation) AND attend classes on Japanese 'city and country' - basically history but more specific and topography obsessed. Oh and Japanese Art, that lecture is a life saver though, I sit in the corner and draw random sketches.

I did go to Boom Boom Club again! It was a ton of fun, honestly, I wish I had had time to write down all the brilliance of the acts again like I did last time I went, but now so much time has passed and I don't think my discriptions would do the fabulous setting justice anymore. I also went to see Versailles play O2 Academy, they were amazing once again and I got to see many many friends I adore as well as prance around in frills. They show was brillant and I remain a huge fan of Yuki's drumming, he is fantastical - and I made sure to tell him so after the show at the meet. He seemed firsly shocked then quite pleased.

There was also yet more fun to be had at Japan Underground last weekend where three electro/chip-tune groups played, HONDALADY, Tokyo Pinsalocks and GalapagosS. The trick about GalapagosS is, it's run by half of the chip-tune duo FLOPPY, who I am a huge fan of. Honestly, seeing this group was just fantastical and they were amazing. Standing right in front of them, getting to meet with them and buy their EP in a plastic wrapper was so much fun.

On the KOBOSHI front, lots of drawing has been going on but not much chopping or sewing. The time it takes to be careful and thoughtful with patterns and stitches - I just don't seem to have the time for it right now, but I'm determined to shoot with one of my most brilliany aquaintances in November so I'm going to have to get off my ass sometime.

Have a picture of my from before I ran to class this morning...



I'm going to make a post of a few of my sketches so you guys can see them, I love sketching and it's one thing I'll never stop doing no matter how pressed for time I am. See, KOBOSHI can't die!

Chilling in the SOAS bar, classes start again on Monday, lectures all sorted out, everything fine fine (except that I'm avoiding my Japanese teacher because she needs to give me a test and I REFUSE. NO TESTS YET.).

This weekend I'm going to Boom Boom Club again - CANNOT WAIT
Then Versailles are playing in London once more, all set for some fabulous renaissance style orchestral metal with fabulous cotumes.

I'm also working quite a few evenings and I need to attend alot of meetings about my final year study projects so October is looking busy. November, likewise, which as you can imagine is making KOBOSHI dissapear under a pile of other things. This does not make me happy.

I admit there has been a regrettable hold up where the whole promotional plan sort of screwed up and that disscouraged me from completing some of the actual designs for the collection. But I don't want it to turn into something I put off and put off until it becomes insignificant. So as well as starting my final year of university I will continue to add to the mini collection and search for help to promote it.

I have options in mind, but I also want to open up the opportunities for anyone who might want to help me launch this project. So, over the next week of so, I'm going to be posting sneak peeks of the current sketches and designs, and making some shout outs for help with things like modeling, graphics and photography. If you think it sounds like fun, drop me a line 8D

I made this cake.

It was dark chocolate tripple layer cake with strawberry meringue buttercream and chocolate ganache.

It was quite possibly the most AWESOME cake I have ever made.

It is all gone now...