November 22. 2004 23:28

NaNoManga and Kobosan

Long time no write. Hisasshiburi, if I were to speak Japanese. I've been busy drawing manga, shopping and arranging the photographs so I can put them online. I wanted to write earlier, but somehow I got engaged with other things and I didn't want to sleep even less ^_^; I have several e-mails to answer and so many projects under way, but there are only so many hours in a day...

I spent 7 hours with the NaNoManga on Saturday and today 2 hours before school and half an hour after. Tomorrow, if I can wake up, I'll go there before class again, and then I can use the afternoon studio hours (5 of them), too, if I won't do the wagashi manga. (I still haven't started, but I kinda don't want to until I've finished the NaNoManga... Even if that means I won't be able to finish it before deadline.) Wednesday I'll have garbage duty again so I'm sure to be up at 8, which means at least an hour before school and 5 hours in studio in the afternoon. On Thursday I have Japanese in the morning, but I can use the hour between it and lunch. Friday is a bit full, unless I want to spend my evening at school, but Saturday I can use the 3 hours in the morning again, if I can wake up. That makes a total of 16 hours left for this week... If I sketch a page in 1,5 hours and ink at the same speed, that means I should have 7 pages left after this. That's 10 hours and it would have to fall on Sunday and Monday, if I want to keep the deadline... Phew.

But I still think 50 images is a bit little compared to 50 000 words. Next time I'll do more. I'm tempted to say 50 pages, but that means almost two pages per day, which is 6 hours of work counted with my current system... And then the page planning to go with that. Though maybe the page planning could be counted into the October preparations in this project? The rule could be that story outline and page plans can be done during October (but not before) but there should be no real drawings before November. And then it's just up to how fast you can draw and how finished you want the work to be. That sounds quite right, compared to the novel thing: you can either just sketch the pages or finish them like a "pro novelist". As long as they make a readable story. Maybe that could be the thing.

On Sunday, on the other hand, I spent no time on drawing. Instead I went to Kobosan market at Toji. (I can't believe it's been a month since my parents were here and it's Kobosan again already O_o) This time my sole purpose was to find a pretty kimono. Mind set and eyes on the task, I went through every kimono stall that came across. Quite fast I found a very pretty white-yellowish kimono with red-orange-green butterflies on it, but it cost 12 000 yen, so I left it hanging there... but after a while of searching from the other stalls, I came back. I couldn't get it out of my mind, it was just what I was looking for... Except that the sleeves were, again, some 5 cm too short, but it seems to be impossible to find a kimono with long enough sleeves. I tried about 25 of them on while I was at the market, and all had sleeves that were 5 cm too short. So I looked at it for a while again, contemplated, bargained the price down to 10 000 and bought it. Yep, that's it. I've got a 10 000 yen pretty, perfectly coloured kimono. The seller put a matching green obi in for free (it was 3000 yen), but I think I'll rather take the red one I already had, because the green one is a bit bright... The red one matches at least as well.

So there. That completed the most important task. (To be a good story-teller, should I have saved it to the last? It happened almost first, though.) I also got another kimono that looked like it was one of the more expensive ones, but it only cost 3000 yen. (Oh yeah, I forgot to say, 10 000 yen was cheap for a good kimono. Most were around 25 000.) The colours in that cheaper one are kinda like the ones in the more expensive one, but a bit less "serene"... It has almost pink base and multi-coloured patterns, mostly orange, brown and greenish. It makes a pair with the green obi, but it's a bit strong match. Well, I guess I can wear it to something, or sell it on to someone.

The smaller tasks were to find a yukata for the grey obi (didn't find, this task is so very complicated), a green plain obi for the yukata I got from Jani (didn't find but this was the least important), find an obi for the white kimono (didn't find, not so important) and, last but not least, check if I could find some kimono and obi for Tsu and Frigga. Frigga asked in me to take one if I happened to find, so why not ^_^ I don't think I can find anything that's exaclty her size (she's tall), but I can get some good-looking ones and we can see if they fit tolerably. I had a pretty good idea of what kind of colour scheme I was looking for, but when you're looking for a (cheap) kimono for someone else from a flee market, you have to make some compromises... I couldn't really find anything like what I was looking for, but when the market was about to close, some of the biggest sellers put a sale of 3 for 1000 yen, so I got 6 different ones that they can choose from. Mostly blue, because they were the prettiest, and then a yellowish green and a light-coloured one. I couldn't get any obi for them, but I noticed the wine red shade goes perfectly with all, so worst case scenario is that I'll just get a pile of those ^_^;

This is getting into one hellova speach about kimono, but what the hell, I don't care ^_^ Within these 6 cheap kimono (which, by the way, are not in best shape because they were the cheapest, but with a little work they'll be okay) there were 2 that fit with the silver blue obi I had, so now I only have to find a kimono for the grey one and for a new, striped one. I thought the new one would fit my yukata, but it's a bit wrong. That's okay, I'll just get some cheap yukata for that. What I'm worried about is the grey one... It's so pretty I really want to wear it, but it's difficult to match. I'm thinking about something dark and cool, but haven't found the right one. (Then of course I have that extremely pretty narrow red obi that would really go with some nice colourful kimono, but I can always match it with the expensive one or the white one if I really want.)

On the obi front things are a lot easier: if I can't find anything from the markets, I can always buy those green and red ones new. It's just the white kimono that needs a bit of work. It's very difficult to find an obi that's not so bright that it'd stand out from the white and not cold so it'd make the kimono look yellow. It's either very light yellow or nature colours, or then it's dark red and orange. Fortunately, I'm not so desperate to get a match for the white kimono as I am for the grey obi.

Having bought all this, I had 3 heavy bags full of kimonos. Some of the people at the market looked at me a bit strangely... But really, what can you do when you get souvenirs for friends? ^_^;; I couldn't wait until next time, they wouldn't be there anymore. So :P to them. Actually, there's only gonna be one Kobosan until I leave... (Or two if you count the one that's on the day I'm leaving :P) There are other markets, too, but thinking about that makes me so sad... There's only one full month left ;_;

But hey, my shopping day isn't over yet! What, did you think this much text would be enough? Or 3 heavy bags? No, after Kobosan I went to Kyoto Station and bought a Cinnamoroll plush pillow (that was one hell of a crowd to be walking in with those bags, but I'm not going to Kyoto Station that often, and that pillow was just too cute), and then I went to the shopping streets ^_^ I had planned this when I left home, when I didn't know I was gonna get 3 bags of kimonos from kobosan, and I couldn't fight down the urge to go walking in the shopping streets. I just love to walk around a shopping area, spending time more than money but ready to buy if I find something really nice. I had a small headache because I hadn't drank enough, but still I wanted to go. The lockers at the subway station saved me ^_^

First I went to Book-Off to check if there was any Inu-Yasha, even if that'd mean another bag, full of books. And to my great pleasure, there was! (It's just one more bag, that can't kill me :P) So, now I'm the happy owner of the 25 first volumes of Inu-Yasha manga ^_^ That only covers until the Shichinintai arch, though, so that doesn't really help my need to read new stuff... But it's a start ^_^ I paid the packet (1500 yen, that's cheap!) and they were kind enough to keep it at the store for me for a couple of hours until I came back from shopping. I also got an Utada Hikaru CD, a V6 CD (good old boy band pop *grin*) and a hitomi CD. That hitomi one surprised me, even though I wasn't expecting anything from it. And it has horrible English.

Okay, the downtown shopping part isn't that long ^_^ I went to get ko-gal loose schoolgirl socks ('cause they're cool, haha, good to wear to conventions and stuff :P), got a pair of brown knee-highs from TutuAnna (I still love that shop's name ^_^) to wear with my brown skirt (wearing that set now), then tried on a couple of tiny, over-prized skirts. But they're all too small for me, I fear. I haven't even bothered to look until now, and it was no use this time either ^_^ I'd love some trendy Japanese wear, but they're all so tiny and expensive. I'd have to lose more than all the fat in my body to fit into them... I can wear shirts, though, but I've found enough used ones from the flee marketers at school to feel the need to buy one with a high price :P Then I ate a hamburger at Wendy's. Not as good as Hesburger, but a change ^_^ Then I gathered all my stuff and heaved it to the metro under the eyes of amazed spectators (I heard someone behind me say "she's carrying all that on her own?" in Japanese), travelled to Kokusaikaikan, loaded it all on my bike and walked it home. Oh, what a genious thing a bike is ^_^

Today, I almost forgot it was my garbage duty this morning. I remembered it at last, but I stayed up too late to be getting up at 7, so I almost slept in. But I managed to pick the right bags by guessing (Monday and Thursday are regular garbage days, Wednesday is recycled day, this I confirmed only after taking the trash) and got them under the net before it was 8 o'clock. Then I went to school, drew manga, came home, went to the convenience store, planned some menus for upcoming days and wrote this. The usual ^_^