Christmas/GTOTM

Konnichiwa!

... and Happy New Year! My friend Ayana let me know all about the Japanese new year. They go to the shrine and buy charms, and then have a big meal. The meal includes kamaboko, which is a really weird [pink and white-striped gelatinous fish puree (not interested :/)The holidays have left me SO behind on this blog, and life in general. So I apologize in advance. But if you're still with me then you might just be interested in some of the many cool Christmas presents I got from my mom, hmm? Thought so :) If you're an avid reader (and of course, I hope you are), you will recognize some of these things from previous posts, before I owned them. Let me show you some pics

 Does anyone recall the sushi shorts my mom bought me from Hawaii? Well these are the sushi PANTS. 

 tea set from The Spice Merchant- LOVE IT SO MUCH

 Three types of tea from Chelmsford Tea & Gift: Kapchorua, Vanilla, and Lemon. All are types of green tea. The Kapchorua has a very strong earthy traditional green tea flavor. When you take it out of the package, it kinda looks like the pellets you feed to fish. The other two are probably both forms of sencha green tea; one with vanilla blossom petals and the other with lemon peel shavings. All are very soothing and delicious, but my Green Tea of the Month has got to be the vanilla green tea. It is AMAZING!!! Sorry I didn't give it its own blogpost, I forgot to take pictures of me steeping it (I use the new tea steeper from my boyfriend, which works fabulously) plus I didn't want to do two blogposts in one day (bit of an Ainsley overload for you pals)

 sushi erasers from World Market ( ^-^)

and here is the one my mom was most excited to give me. It's a legitimate antique kimono that she had shipped in from Japan (my favorite part was probably seeing the Japanese characters on the packaging, I'm so lame) This picture was taken before we watched the video tutorial on how to properly wrap it (but this way shows off my curves, eh?). You basically pull up the ends until they are at your ankle then wrap both sides around you. Next you pull the belt around the front, cross over the ends in the back, and then tie it in a bow in the front again. You tuck the bow under. After that you pull up the fabric at the chest until it is billowing over the belt so much that you can no longer see the belt. Voila you're in a kimono!

Hope you all enjoyed, and I'd love to hear what you did or received for the holidays.

Keep it kawaii folks!

-Ainsley