Passage of Time

The story of my hair and fashion sense (or lack there of...)

Recently I've been going through all my old photos (because i'm a procrastinator and don't want to study for upcoming finals) and along with the nostalgic memories, I have been amazed at how drastically I have changed over the past decade. From my clothes to my hair, I have gone through some awesome phases (and some not so awesome phases). I have always been free with hair color (I believe i've had every color of the rainbow) and my clothes have gone from boy-ish baggy grunge to whatever you'd call me now. And since I find it amusing, I thought you would too! So take my hand and lets stroll down my memory lane.

Span of time; roughly 7 years (approx 2004-present)

This facial expression was a favorite of mine. I'm wearing what I believe is a ripped
Korn shirt from goodwill and my friend Stefani is my hair
dresser

During this period in my life I had this "curtain" over my face. But just because you
couldn't see me, didn't mean that I couldn't see you. Also, notice the random chain bracelet?  I found that
on the street.

I very much liked the color black and adored those print t-shirts with the random sayings on them that you could buy from Fred Meyers. Pants wise I was down with the cargo pants (you know, the ones with lots of pockets in them?). Wallet chain (actually a dog chain that I took...well, from my dog. He had another one so he didn't mind), black converse and wire Harry Potter style glasses complete my look.

My buddies and I enjoyed playing dress up at all hours of the day. This particular moment was with an exchange student (natsuki) when we were out of things to do at 2am but didn't want to go to sleep. Needless to say, that Yukata looks pretty bomb ass on me XD lol

Wearing a bra outside the shirt was another favorite look of mine. And oh hey, you can see my face! No more curtain! Also, make-up did not become a priority for me until much later.  

This was not Halloween.

I started to experiment with eye-liner but I gave up pretty quickly (that shit was hard to get on because my eye was so twitchy!).  The print shirts, cargo pants and black on black however, was still my top fashion choice.
 

Purple hair just in time for 2004 snoball? Check. So spiky that it constantly poked my date in the face hair-do. Check.

Ugly, deep blue curtain dress to top it all off. Priceless (actually it was pretty expensive now that I think about it).

Strawberry red hair + different colored contact lenses = me at 15. Oh, and don't forget the Beatles Yellow Submarine print T, dog wallet chain, and black cargo pants.

Around this time officially starts the black eye-liner, painted nails and gummy-bracelet stag. But hey, look! She's wearing a color!! 

Could it have happened that she moved away from print shirts and cargo pants for good? And that green-ish blue hair with the black is an interesting combination, but um, what's with the spoon?

Well...at least it's not cargo pants? See what I mean about the bra outside the shirt thing though? and yeah...I did go out in public like this. 

Lets take it apart. I have a polka dot moo-moo, a blue strapless bar, a sweater vest, a green apron, green checkered little boy shorts, what looks like a grey collared shirt, one Halloween sock, and one black stocking with black converse and a baseball cap to wrap  it all up.

Hmm, well it looks like the printed T's couldn't stay away forever, but at least my hair is a solid color! I believe that sweat shirt was a quick silver one that I paired with almost everything I wore.  

This was before I discovered hair straighteners. But look at those brown eyes! Wow wee sister! And I'm lovin' the Bat Man shirt.

 

Take two with the Yukata get up. This time I believe was a little more successful than the last try a couple years previous (same Yukata and everything, better way of putting it together). I see I still had an affection for those stupid gummy bracelets though....

This is my fighting pose. But wait...are those,  jeans I see you wearing?! Like, honest to god jeans with just the standard four pockets; two in front, two in back? But the dog-wallet chain is still in tacked. The bright green of my stripped green shirt contrasts well with my black hair and white background don't you think?  Still haven't figured out what a hair straightener is but at least i'm beginning to style it in the back with copious amounts of gel. 

I went through a beanie phase as well. It was so bad, I was even wearing beanies in the middle of summer! I miss that hat...wonder where it got to. 

I got that green china-man shirt in Seattle and loved to wear it around to feel all cool and Asian-y. This period also brought on experimentation with light blue jeans but, alas, that dog chain is still there. And if this were a back shot of me you would have seen how much gel I put in my hair...it was pretty crunchy and it clumped together to make me look kinda bald. But hey, I thought I was pretty damn fly. 

Still not Halloween and yes I went out like that (see the china-man coat thing? It came with the China-man shirt XD). That fabulous skirt is courtesy of  Goodwill btw, as was the majority of my clothing. 

And we have orange-y highlights now! But we are done with the colored contacts I notice... 

Okay so I never really get over wearing screen T's, but whatever. This is during the period when Myspace was really taking over so I (and everyone else) had millions of photos of ourselves posing such as thus. 

The blond (orange?) high lights didn't last (same as any other color) and I went back to black (once you go black...eh well, you know). That shirt I used to wear normally as well, all covered in dye stains and what-not. Yeah, I was cool. This was my first encounter with Japanese natto (fermented soy beans). I think my face explains it all.

 I went to school dressed like this. In fact, this was taken at school. The red lipstick was a fav. 

Oh, starting to get a little girly with the skirt there! I went through a stocking/legging/tights phase were I would mix and match them and didn't care if it worked or not. Fortunately it worked out in this outfit, but I don't think I went anywhere with this...it was too normal for me to go out in I guess. 

I did manage to tone down the color scheme though and tried for a more sophisticated(?) look (but still with those bracelets!!!). This period led into my ripped jean, t-shirt sorta punk phase. 

Not my sunglasses but after trying them on I made it my mission to get me some ( and I have!). Btw, that black  and pink gay little bracelet is from one of my ex-boyfriends and I wore it everyday like a poser. 

Snoball 2006. Perfectly styled hair. Check. Sexy black dress. Check. Gay bracelet, Purple mesh stockings, and black pin stripped converse? Check, check, and check. 

Ahh, finally I have given up on the cargo pants completely. (photo courtesy of Stefani) 

Purple scarf, four layered tank-tops and light blue ripped jeans with my yon-sama glasses and jrock style hair cut. I was pimpin' (photo courtesy of Stefani) 

Marching band looking jacket was a great find for me. I still have it even! (dog chain, I see you)

You really are. I enjoyed wearing my hair tied in two pony tails a lot. I think almost every day I wore pigtails.

oh, the school uniform stage (okay, so it wasn't a "stage" so to speak because I technically HAD to wear it). I made it my  own, though with a stripped black and white(had one in red and green too, I would alternate) tank underneath, rolled up skirt and unbuttoned jacket.

Bring on the piercings! This is my trying to be all hard-core visual kei (Japanese Visual Rock music) but not really sticking with it after a couple weeks of trying stage. I am wearing a pink stripped cardigan with a skull on it somewhere, a black with white lace neck tie and i'm not sure about the shirt. We'll just go with no shirt. My hair took advantage of this period though and grew very long. past my shoulders long.

 

But then I cut it into a sort of mullet/bowl cut looking for some reason. But hey, at least I got in touch with my heart side. haha. 

SCA get-up. (if you really want to know, you can ask me). Yes, that is a pirate hat. And yes I have dressed like this out in public many, many, many times. Think of it as a sort of Lord of the Rings style, medieval sort of  past hobby of mine.  

Then I entered college (damn my hair was short!!) 

And I slowly, (dir en grey concert shirt, how I love concert shirts)

But surely (whip it, baby, whip it! Skirt is the only sex pot thing I own and my last feeble effort at trying to do the VK thing)

Became the person (I started wearing heavy black eyeliner for a period)

You know (I miss my white hair!!)

and love

today (I really hated how dark it came out when I first dyed it)

But now I like it. 

Now my style is more laid back and simple I think, with just a hint of a punk-ish undertone to it. I'm back into wearing mostly dark colors, but now I like to accent with extreme yellows or blues, etc. Just little accents that catch the eye. And even now i'm starting to change into more of a hippie, earthy type colors and patterns, etc but it hasn't completely taken affect yet (because I have no money to buy new clothes).

Well, thank you for coming with me on that long journey, and I hope you had fun and maybe learned something new about me!

PEACE OUTSIDE
Jamie

Osaka part 1

Okay, even though I'm tired, I guess I'll provide ya'll with an update.

After spending the evening with some amazing friends I climbed onto my 12:30am bus to Osaka. The seat was terrible. The lady who sat next to me was fast asleep the moment we took off and kept on slowly inching her butt towards my end of the seat, making my seat smaller and smaller. As soon as I got on the bus I realized I had to pee but was wholly disappointed to find that the bus was not equipped with a toilet. In a country that has butt massagers on their toilet seats (among other various bells and whistles not generally associated with toilets back home) one would think that they could install normal toilets on a bus. But no. So I had to wait two hours until we got to our first rest stop. By about 4am I gave up trying to sleep (not only was there no room, but the bus was uncomfortably warm). By 7:30 we arrived in Kyoto and an hour later in Osaka. Finding my hostel was way easy (thank god) and all the workers here are very friendly and can speak English (not that it's a problem for me, but it is nice).

I had missed the 8am check in so I had to wait until 3pm before I could get my room. Grumpy, wanting a shower and a change of clothes, I walked around in search of a cafe. The streets were practically empty and I don't know if it was because it was 9am in the morning or because it was xmas eve (xmas here isn't a national holiday so no one gets it or the eve off but since the 23rd was the Emperor's B-day which is a national holiday, i'm thinking most people just went and took the 24th off as well) but there was no one about. A vast contrast to the busyallthetimenomatterwhattimeofdayornight lifestyle of Tokyo. I wasn't long in my search for a cafe and found myself in a nice, old Victorian style shop (not like a tacky Victorian style either) owned by this old couple and had some very nice coffee and raisin toast.

Not knowing what else to do and wondering if they would at least let me shower, I walked back to the hostel. When I had first arrived here there was only one older lady sitting in the lobby who said she was visiting from Australia. When I came back the second time however, it was packed. A couple, also from Australia, are here on vacation, three American girls and one American guy all filled the little kitchen area. All very nice people too. I got to talking to the three American's (okay one is actually from Canada but whatever) and found out that they are all on JET, working in Hokkaido. They were going down to Kobe to see one of the oldest/best preserved castles in Japan and wondered if I wanted to join them after finding out that I had nothing to do and couldn't check in until 3pm. My reply to the offer was "actually, yeah I would like to join you if you don't mind". Shower-less and still wearing the clothes of the previous day, off we went!

The train ride to Kobe (actually the castle is in Himeji but whatev) took a little over an hour. Unfortunately the main part of the castle is under restoration right now so we couldn't go inside. Bright side though, because it is closed not very many tourists were there crowding the scene. Down side, it was the coldest freaking day I have ever experienced in Japan. Bright side, there was a very sweet old lady who works as a volunteer tour guide for foreigners; therefore we got a free guided tour through the grounds and the parts we could go into, all in English.

The castle was really amazing, but sadly a lot of the buildings/mansions that used to be on the grounds were all burned down in the Meiji period because the castle was converted from living quarters for ladies and lords to barracks for soldiers. None of the original artifacts remain either but the castle itself is still wonderfully intact (even though it's being restored). Actually, when we got to the sight and saw all the scaffolding we thought that they were building some sort of modern building practically right on top of what we thought was the main part of the castle (turned out to only be just one of the separate towers) and were completely shocked. But thankfully we were wrong and the Japanese have more class than that.

After the castle we went into Kobe itself and ate some ridiculously good Kobe Beef XD. Couldn't help it, we were in Kobe so might as well go for it, right? And it was worth it. Then we set off in search of a cake shop that we heard was famous. Here in Japan people eat Christmas cake and KFC chicken for xmas. I don't know either. But alas! The cake shop was closed. Instead, we ended up going to this little tiny cafe that's owned by this opera singer and we had coffee and waffles! The lady was super nice and made some bomb-ass waffles, but I think we made her a little nervous (in fact I know we did cuz she kept on saying "sorry, i'm nervous". Can't blame her, if a bunch of foreigners speaking a language I didn't know invaded my little cafe kitchen i'd be a little nervous too). But it was all a good type of nervous and she sent us away with a gift of 和菓子　"wagashi" or Japanese treats.  

Now i'm sitting on my bed in my hostel, shower finally taken, clean clothes on, curtain drawn, personal light on, main light off writing this blog post alone cuz the other girls braved the cold again (i'm serious, it's C-O-L-D outside)... I'm staying in a mixed dorm room and one of the other inhabitants (the only male) just walked in... definitely staying behind my curtain.

Tomorrow there's some sort of Mochi making thing going on so i'm gonna go to that and maybe an aquarium and whatever else I can find to do around here. Maybe i'll go to Nara.

I forgot to bring my camera cord so I can't upload pictures until I get home.

PEACE OUTSIDE
Jam    

Settling in

take away the trees and add buildings
and you'll have the view outside my
window right now.

It's amazing to me how much at home I feel here. I feel nothing of that awkward insecureness that I felt when I was here 3 years ago. Might be the fact that I am older now and have been living on my own for the past two years, so the shock of being away from my family is less...well, shocking (but I still miss all of you like crazy!).
I keep reflecting back on those times in Shizuoka and realizing how much that experience changed me and how much I grew from it. I am much more confident in myself and my decisions then I was back then and I think that my whole first experience here is what caused it. I wonder what kind of person I would be now if I hadn't have been able to have that adventure? Although I do take into account that most people do a lot of growing (personality and maturity wise) from the ages 16-20 but I think that I would be a much different person had I not  gone all that. Throwing yourself into a culture that's completely backwards from yours at a fairly young age is pretty mind blowing.

Right now there's a huge thunder storm going on. Listening to the rain pound against the windows has never made me felt more at ease. <3 rain storms.
~

Me and Saki! Hisashiburi ne!!

Monday I meet up with a girl I went to high school with (here in Japan) and we had a fabulous time catching up and wondering around Shinjuku. I guess that quite a few of my buddies from Shizuoka now live in Tokyo, so hopefully I'll be able to hook up with more of them in the future!

Yesterday I went and opened a bank account with Citibank. As soon as I get my account number and card I'll submit that to the SILS (School of International Liberal Studies) office and then i'll be all set to get my first scholarship installment! Yay for money!

Me and Aiko(?) in the park drinking

Last night was also this party for all the foreign students and friends. Pretty much it was a bunch of people shoved into this outside cafeteria and feed some awful food and booze. It cost 1,500 YEN and I was a little angry about going at first (it wasn't mandatory) but then I got to talking to people (and drinking more than the alloted one beer) and I started to have fun and eventually forget about the 1,500 YEN and awful food. Afterwards everyone seemed to go to the same park near campus and drink (all split up in groups of course, no mingling done there. Meaning of course that all the OUS students hung out with all the OUS Waseda volunteers, all the California students with the cali volunteers, etc) until the last train when people either went home or, in my case (and three other students) went to Karaoke until the first train started in the morning. Got home around 7am, said sorry to my host family (I had called them so they knew and just laughed at me when I walked through the door) and promptly went to sleep for 5 hours.

Tomorrow I have another orientation (like part 6 or something, jeez!). But we're going to get reimbursements for the fair from the airport to the hotel as well as all the meals we had to pay for during the past two weeks.
 
School starts on Monday and I couldn't be more excited! Though i'm always excited before each term starts then a couple days into it I can't wait until the next vacation ;D

"don't step on it...it makes you cry."

Oh, then next Friday i'm going to go get my physical on campus so that I can use their gym and pool! Stoked! I brought my yoga mat with me (best decision ever) and have been doing various yoga routines religiously, but  I miss running and lifting weights. And I'm going to start swimming as well! Fitness here I come!!







until next time,
Peace
Jamie