Asian Extravaganza!!!

So, yesterday I was discussing kimonos with my friends at church. A kimono is a typically Japanese type of clothing. Japanese people don't normally wear them nowadays, but there

are the people who like wearing

them all the time and then there are those who wear them at special occasions. Kimonos originated in China, actually, and the Japanese brought the concept back to their country after one of their many invasions of China. Kimonos are a big part of anime (Japanese cartoons) and some of them are really pretty. I went

searching last night and found some awesome ones.

Here's some pictures-

I don't know where most of these are from :P The one on the right is Haruhi from Ouran Host

Club...but I don't know many others.

Then there is the main characters of Furuba. From left to right-

Yuki (boy), Tohru (girl) Kyo (obviously, a guy) and Kagura (girl). Notice how Kyo, who hates tight clothes, wears his kimono looser, and Yuki, who likes tighter clothes, wears his higher up

against his neck and doesn't roll up his sleeves.

This is one of my favorite pics. :)

Yahiko from Rurouni Kenshin. This is a really nice picture of a guy wearing a kimono. I couldn't find many of those and eventually had to just sear

ch for Rurouni Kenshin pictures.

Then I have one of Sasuke from Naruto. Man, I hate that jerk....:P

He lost all that "I'm the awesome guy with an arrogant attitude." In Part 2. He's just...not cool anymore. Actually, I've seen several screenshots of him from Part 2 and in some of those screenshots, he looks almost sad. You're a fool and you know it, Sasuke!!!

Anyway, I've also recently become interested in Odango or, Dango. They're Japanese dumplings. And guess what? I found a recipe to make them!!! :) DANGO.

Also, I foung a neat Chinese recipe blog. Some of the stuff is really cool and I'd like to try it.

So, yes, I have been thinking about Asian stuff a lot recently. My mom looked up the show 'Sagwa, The Chinese, Siamese Cat' on YouTube for Lillian and we watched a lot of it last night. My old love of the show was rekindled. There is so much Chinese culture in the show, down to the very fact that the cats can do calligraphy.

Anyway, I need to go. Hope you enjoy the many pictures; I'll be posting more later.

-Argent♥

Gone...gone far away...

So. My brothers are gone to Alabama/Florida for a week and three days. Or four days. Something like that. I'm actually kinda missing them; it's really quiet around here and kinda boring. Watching American anime without my brothers is...empty. I know they would love Teen Titans. It's not a hit with me, but they'd love it.

So, about American animes-I'm going to attempt to do a rev

iew of Avatar: The Last Airbender, a show I watched several months ago.

Alright, so the plot of this show is pretty good. The show revolves around the character's ability to 'bend' elements; the characters are able to control one of the four elements-earth, water, f

ire, and air. However, a person can only bend one element, the element of the country they were born in. All of these countries lived peacefully together, until the Fire Nation came up with the idea that they should control these nations. They began attacking the different countries using their strong military power, along with their ability to bend fire. Now, there is only one person who can stop the Fire Nation. The Avatar; the only person able to master all four elements. But the Avatar has been missing for one hundred years; and the

Fire Nation has nearly succeeded in it's conquest. This is where our story begins.

There is no swearing in it, I think only a few insulting things are said.

The violence is little; but that depends on what you call violence. As for me; the show is fine on that element.

Now, we come to my biggest problem with Avatar: The romance.

Don't get me wrong, I love romance. It's a great thing in anime. But in Avatar there's too much kissing! AUGH!!! *covers her eyes and shakes her head crazily* See, most anime relationships aren't half as PHYSICAL, YUCK!!!

But your opinion of physical and romantic depends, and it only gets that way when you reach Book Three: Fire.

:P Overall, it really isn't too bad, only some obvious romantic plot and crazily cheesy jokes here and there. :P I'm mostly a Japanese anime person; Americans have no idea how to correctly draw the style without longing with all their hearts to make it look more realistic. But Avatar was done well, it looks pretty good, and my only complaint is they didn't use traditional blush lines. But then, you normally don't in the animation, even when it is Japanese. So I'm just being silly when it comes to that point. Example-

See the pink lines on their cheeks? Those are my beloved blush lines....lol.

Well, (back to the original topic, Argent) if you like anime and haven't seen it, I reccomend you watch Avatar. It's a good start to anime for anyone, to spite it's a relatively Americanized anime.

If you wanna watch traditional anime first, I recommend Hikaru no Go ENGLISH DUB. Not the Japanese, the English.

So hope you enjoyed my overly random excuse for a post, I'm bored and missing my American anime loving brothers. So bare with me. And sorry for the randomness.

One last thing. I am attempting to learn Japanese seriously, and am also going to my first piano lesson this evening. I'm worried that I won't pull through with accomplishing these two dreams, so please pray for me. I think I can do it, but I'm not sure. So pray that I can! :)

-Argentia