Saturday, 11 January 2014

Starting off

One day, you wake up in a strange room. However, the room for some reason, looks like yours. When you come downstairs, your mother begins talking to you in your second language (In my case, Japanese). You think you can manage it at first, but it seems to be more difficult than you thought it would be. Then she starts speaking about a "Saihorn". You look up what it is then you see a picture of a Rhyhorn. Then you make new friends and they too speak the same language your mother was speaking. Now, you've just received your second badge and each day, you are gradually understanding more and more. In time, you will be able to manage the language barrier with the occasional need to look up a word.

In the previous paragraph, I was talking about a challenge I am taking with Pokémon X (which I recently bought). The challenge for me is to complete the game in Japanese. Even though I do not have the Japanese version (Unfortunately, the Nintendo 3DS does not like using games not from its region), you can choose from a list of languages for your game. From the top of my head, there is English, French and Japanese as well as some other languages.

By the way, for anyone living in a country where the national language is/ blogging/reading blogs in a language that is not your mother tongue, what were your experiences at the beginning in terms of the language barrier? Did you formally learn the language beforehand or did you have no knowledge of the language previously?

Speaking of, this relates to my experience of starting to wear Lolita as I have to learn how to create co-ordinates even though you have seen many of them done by others. Also, as in playing Pokémon in Japanese, you start off with a vocabulary/pieces that you think would be sufficient but they end up being a bit insufficient. For example, For my first Lolita outfit, I did not have a petticoat and everything I was wearing was offbrand/handmade. Also, the cutsew I was wearing was too long, in my opinion (Do clothing manufacturers think that all Australians are tall?).

In the future, things will improve. Now, armed with a petticoat (and a slowly improving knowledge of Japanese) as well as more experience, I feel that the next Lolita co-ord will be better (as well as my ability to be immersed in Japanese).

Thursday, 2 January 2014

New Year's Day 2014

Happy New Year everyone!

First, I will reflect on what happened with my Lolita life during 2013. On the beginning of February last year, I started my Lolita blog, Pink lace + Glitter. Next, I created my first Lolita skirt, which formed part of my first outfit, which was posted in Two Lolita Firsts. Finally, I ordered some items from Taobao which arrived after Christmas. It included two shoes, a petticoat, a blouse, a hand bag and Infanta's Creamy Cat JSK with a matching head bow (more on Creamy Cat in a future post).

In 2014, my goals are as follows.

Lose weight

I would have done a post on Creamy Cat/shown a worn photo of it today, but it does not fit me at the moment. Because of this, I need to lose weight in order to wear it. This is the same problem with my pink Bodyline JSK too. Besides those two items, at my current size, I am worried that many Lolita clothes would not fit me well.

Wear Lolita again

After wearing Lolita for the first time, I want to wear Lolita again. Maybe I could try wearing my blue skirt with/without a petticoat in a Casual/Sweet co-ordinate whenever I can (e.g. the weekend). Next time I wear Lolita, I am going to consider wearing one of my brand new An*tai*na shoes. I don't know how many times I am going to wear Lolita this year though.

Build my Lolita wardrobe

Currently, my Lolita wardrobe is becoming substantial, with my handmade skirt and my recent Taobao purchases as the additions for 2013. However, I am currently making a headbow to match my handmade skirt. After that, I am considering making another skirt and during the course of this year, before I buy anything else, I will wear Lolita a few times. However, this does not include random offbrand finds that could be incorporated into a Lolita outfit.

And finally, one wish:

Attend a meet up

As I have not felt like a true Lolita until I wore it, I did not feel comfortable going to a Lolita meet up. However, I would like to go to a meet up sometime this year.