a month in a nutshell ♡ 2016.10

It feels kind of weird that it is already time for another month in a nutshell again. 

After life has been kind of slow the last weeks of September it sped up rapidly in October and there is so much that changed or is in change right now, I can't even grasp it completely yet - standing in the middle of it all.

It's actually so much going on right now, that I struggle to write coherent sentences right now - there is still so much whirling around in my head.

I hope that sitting down and writing about October and remembering some of the things I did the past couple of weeks will slow me down a bit. Maybe this will make the spinning stop (it's a great excuse to not do my homework, too - even though I will most probably regret it tomorrow).

a month in a nutshell ♡ 2016.07

It's almost August, so it's time to gather all the impressions and small adventures I undertook in July and bring it all together in this posting.
If you follow me on twitter (it's @ yukuchan), you already saw all of that but since I am not limited to 140 characters here, you might get a little deeper insight anyway.

   

special ♡ SM pop up store & K-POP gets

People who have followed the updates about my trip to Korea probably remember that I uploaded a ton of pictures in a post about Myeongdong last November already.

Today, other than the previous non-chronological haul posts, I'll talk about a specific topic and share the small amount of impressions I've gathered while being in Korea.

Ironically, I bought more stuff related to Korean pop music and my favorite bands of that genre when I was in Japan than I did last summer when I was actually at the source.

Christmas special ♡ my wishlist

It's this time of the year again, guys.
For those who were stressed the past weeks because of the midterm exams or other important projects, I'm proud of you for working so hard and hope you all received good feedback and high scores! My exam period will be January~February and I'm not ready.
I worked recklessly concerning my needed rest and stuff like that the past couple of weeks to get as much done as possible to be able to kind of enjoy the short vacation that starts next week.
It's holiday season though, which means annual family gatherings and too much food.
It can be kind of exhausting when you have to visit a lot of relatives but I really like the whole idea of sharing a good time once a year to show that you still care and all that so I won't complain.

Anyway, since I saw some of the bloggers I follow do this - or something similar - I decided to share with you, what I put on my wishlist this year - no matter how much I like to prepare presents myself it's still a big part to get presents from beloved ones, for me, too.

명동 ♡ window shopping expeditions

< this post is picture heavy >

Next to the cultural, historical and traditional sites that I visited throughout my vacation, wandering through crowds of people and experiencing the rythym, the pace of the city myself was one of my favorite things to do and though I'm usually moderate with my spendings I really loved to go around and shop with my eyes. How could there be a better place to do that than Myeongdong, one of Seoul's main shopping districts?
Who caught sight of the headline (and is literate in hangul) might have already guessed it; none other is today's posting about!

お土産 ♡ what I bought in Japan

Assuming from my own - pretty nosy - nature, I thought it would be fun to share what I spent all the money on, during my trip. Since I stayed a month in total, I'm sure a certain amount of cash was used to feed and carry myself around. There are only two or three days I recall, when I didn't board a train during my 4 weeks stay.

However, I got the chance to buy a lot of stuff - though I couldn't help my thrifty nature and didn't spend nearly as much as I feared I would - and especially the 100￥ shops, namely Daiso were to my liking. I still don't understand why we can't have something like that where I live.

Literally everything there was more pleasing to the eye than what I've seen for easily twice as much in my home country.

The quality might not be the best and I have to admit that some of the stationery I bought are decrepit by now (after one year of constant use), but other things from the same store still work completely fine.

flashback ♡ lovely birthday presents

I love presents. I love to recieve them almost as much as I love to give them myself.

Sometimes it's a bit hard for me to accept them but in the end it always makes me happy and flattered when someone puts so many thoughts and so much heart into something, to give it to me as a present.

I still find it really hard to tell people what I want for my birthday or Christmas, since I have the habit to work towards my aims on my own and rather see my material wishes as rewards I have to work for, until I eventually earn them.

This might be a rather weird introduction for a birthday post, but here I am - pretty much one month after my actual level-up.

I don't count myself to the people who start to hate their birthday at some point, stressing out how they are growing old and... I really don't get it. I think aging is simply a natural process and it's not even as if you're suddenly a year older when the clock strikes 12am on your birthday - the aging is already done at this point and you can't really run from it anyway, besides there is nothing you have to run from in the first place.

I'm not an enthusiast either - at least when it comes to my own birthday.

I usually celebrate only with my closest friends and family, sometimes only the latter and celebrating usually means cake and nice talks and that's it.

As I mentioned in my last month in a nutshell, this years birthday was one of these I just decribed - being only inches away from the semester's start there wasn't so much time to do anything special whatsoever.

Eitherway, with this piece here, I want to share all the cute and amazing presents that were gifted to me and just thinking about them makes me all smiles, right now.

四月 ♡ a month in a nutshell

I feel like it has been forever since I could post anything beside Pokémon Challenges and I'm so sorry for my lack of updates. Good thing, the 1st of May comes with a free Friday, which means finally a tiny bit of time to settle back and take a breather.

University has been crazy. I guess a big part of that is my personal aspiration and the idea of how much work I want myself to get done and how much effort I want myself to put into all of it. I talked about this in my studying tips update that feels so recently to me, though it has been three full weeks already.

So I guess another reason for why doing such an update feels like a decade to me is, that April just had a lot to offer and a lot of events that took place in some way or another.

2014 catch ♡ august - december

As promised, I won't let you down on the second part of this year's catch.
There are still enough things I want to show you.
I did however not include any Christmas presents or the things I bought in Japan in these updates, since they'll get seperate updates next year.

A U G U S T 

the only thing I got in August. I love to buy t-shirts as a memory after concerts... but sadly LedApple was the last concert where I was able to buy a souvenir like that for me.

fanfiction ♡ ANDROMEDA

This time, I have really exciting news. At least I'm really jittery and happy and a bit proud.

Some of you should know that I have a weak spot for fanfiction and used to spend a good part of my time on websites like asianfanfics. Specifically, since I upload my fanfictions there as well.

However, because of the massive schedule I had with university repeatively throwing bricks into my face - proverbially of course - I now, after beating a writer's block that lasted almost nine months and preparations I did, starting from the first spark of an idea, till editing covers, that took a year at least altogether; I decided it was time to take the big step and get my new project, my first real - big - project 

{at least since I started to write in English} out there.

新大久保駅 ♡ EXO's living room

... or K-POP {and music} in Tokyo

I'm pretty sure this update is long overdue. 

I'm kind of sorry, really but on the other hand I've been such a lazy bum since my lecturers ended.

It's been almost a week now and I didn't do much yet. Not even for my term paper but I gladly realized that my writer's block {that's been bothering me for almost nine moths} is finally gone and I've found the motivation to work on a project I've been planning more than a year now.

This time now, I want to share a bunch of photos from Shin Okubo {already mentioned in the headline} as well as one of my most favorite stores I've been to during my time in Tokyo: Tower Records in Shibuya.

It's a large, 5 or 6 story building stuffed with nothing but music. Music of all sorts, from everywhere and I don't even know what.

It's amazing. I tell you... and I'm pretty sure I spent the majority of the money I spent - there.

just in case ♡ summonflyingtoenail.com review

After my birthday sneaked past silently and next to my slowly starting preparations for the new semester (and the re-exam in Korean) - at least I wish I was doing important things like that - I finally decided on a concept for my JAPAN postings.

But before I'll launch this series I finally want to do the review I've been waiting to do since the moment I ordered the products.

I kid you not.
I was so excited for them to arrive and though it took forever.
It wasn't the stores fault but some trouble the custom office in Germany had.
But after almost 6 weeks they finally arrived - the mobile phone cases I ordered for Christmas from www.summonflyingtoenail.com.

song of the month ✧ 2013 special

Actually I don't know anymore if I had any other special idea behind it, when I decided to do a song of the year 2013 special.
I think I toyed with the idea of making another top 12 out of all the 'winners' this year.
But I decided against it. Because I'm lazy and because this kind of getup didn't seem to appeal to most of you anyway.

Thus the special now is nothing special in the whole sense of special.
Maybe you find yourself enjoying it anyway.
Here are the 13 songs of 2013 which were rewarded... if only with an edited crown.

song of the month ✧ DECEMBER

I honestly hate to bring so much stuff over to this new year now... but it feels even worse to sweep it under the table. So though I decided against continuing that format for 2014 - at least like that - there will be another posting next to this to sum up 2013 in a whole.

But first of all,

 

I wish you the best for the new year. Maybe I'll come up with a small post on that in detail. 

Let's continue witht he usual madness.

As always this is just MY OPINION!

You don't have to agree. You don't have to like. 

Opinions differ naturally and it doesn't make you a bad person.

* and please keep in mind that you can watch the MV clicking on the picture.

The flower bloomed in darkness, the moon risen above the sea ♪

Actually I wanted to do this post like two weeks ago... but thanks to a really busy schedule and a sudden sickness, that knocked me out last week, I never got the chance to finally do it.
But now when finally Chirstmas vacation and 大晦日 comes rolling in, I am free for the rest of the year.
I mean... I still have to learn a couple of vocabs and do stuff for my term paper but all in all it's going to be much more relaxed than I expected it to be.
Yey for that. 

Now let's see what we have here.
This post is somewhat a sequel to my Like a dream, he's a cold machine ♪ posting from October.
After I talked about how I got my copies of MAMA, we're now moving forward to my impressions about their first album XOXO.

Like a dream, he's a cold machine ♪

After it took me forever to make any sense out of the photos left on my hard drive and the steady feeling of hesitation that built up inside of me, regarding the idea of making make-up and circle-lens reviews without a good camera {I'm still waiting for me and my dad to get me my super late birthday present}, I decided to give you another story though it's already been a couple of months since it happened.

In May I got my first EXO albums.*

* Let's not think about in what kind of madness I gave myself when I started to buy real albums instead of just getting my hands on MP3 versions of the songs.
I have to say that I feel much richer {not money-wise but in a figurative sense} and better the way it is now.
The KPOP industry seems to make so much more out of their business, than plain CD packages with a - more or less - exciting cover.
For me it's always like opening treasure boxes when I get a new album of my favorite KPOP musicians.

I bought them from the lovely Angi, who sold them second hand. This was THE big chance for me - back then a bloody beginner when it came to EXO - to finally get more into these guys, since I've been kinda enchanted and shyly interested in them after watching Kai and Lay on New Year's Eve 2012 {I know, I was really, really late to get to them}, when they performed with SM The Performance for one of the many 가요대전 (Gayo Daejun) shows I watched {in one of those shows also EXO had a MAMA performance}. Beside the point, I watched all of them: SBS, KBS and MBC's end-of-the-year-show. 

song of the month ✧ AUGUST

So actually I'm on vacation right now and try to fight my writer's block to finally finish some of the fanfictions I plan for a longer time already... but of course my monthly evaluation shouldn't wait just because I can't get my shit together to finally write the sequel to "The Panda and the Phantom".

As always this is just MY OPINION!

You don't have to agree. You don't have to like. 

Opinions differ naturally and it doesn't make you a bad person.

* and please keep in mind that you can watch the MV clicking on the picture.

Fanfiction Covers ♡

I haven't updated for ages again... Sorry.
But my seminar is over now and I spend the last weekend with my besties.

Anyway - I spend the last few days working on posters/covers for my upcoming EXO fanfiction and decided that, I'll do some for my already uploaded oneshots as well...
I'm going to upload them soon and also finally on my LJ.

So here you can have a look on them... I put the AFF link beneath them so you can read my last works if you click.

song of the month ✧ MAY

For all who didn't notice till now:
I have a new design and I really hope I'll be able to attend to your wishes. 
But since my phone broke last weekend, I can't really show you pictures of the trip to Sanssouci.
I will do this as soon as my phone is fixed and I have the data.
When キュミン is 'alive' again I can do more outfit posts too.
So please stay a bit patient with this just now.  

As always this is just MY OPINION!

You don't have to agree. You don't have to like. 

Opinions differ naturally and it doesn't make you a bad person.

* and please keep in mind that you can watch the MV clicking on the picture.

EXO - WOLF ♫

yes. there is definitely going to be an EXO wolf fanfiction written by me.