The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow

Hello!

Before I start with the real post, I want to apologize for the lack of updates/post this week. The WiFi at home isn't working properly, so I don't have internet access most of the time. Sigh.
I'm using my parents computer at the moment, that's why I'm able to post something new now! 

Last weekend (not this one, but the previous one), I had an amaaaazing party with my best friends! I'll start from the beginning~

November 16, 2012
At 8:45 pm, me and one of my friends went by train to the place where the party would be held. It was quite a long travel, but we had lots of fun together, so the time went by really fast! When we arrived, two of our friends came to pick us up and after we dumped our luggage, we went outside for some stargazing. It was around 12:00 pm I think, and the stars were really bright. One of my friends thought it would be fun to go to the observatory and so we did. I'm still amazed by the fact that the person who was working there let us in without wondering why we where there at midnight. He showed and told us many things about planets and stars and we also looked through a HUGE telescope! We saw Jupiter and its four moons. It was really pretty! When we returned home, we went to sleep.

November 17, 2012

Party day! Around 4:00 pm all 9 of us were together and so the party started! No, this wasn't just an ordinary party with alcoholic drinks, loud music and sweaty people dancing. Hahaha, no no no! It was waaaaay better. We played The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow all night long. It's a really fun game and you have to be smart and cunning to win. We laughed a lot and it was soooo much fun. Everyone played their parts so well! We barely slept that night. I think I slept 1 hour? Maybe a little bit longer, but it wasn't really long. We tried watching The Matrix, but the movie crashed after one and a half hours.

November 18, 2012

For privacy reasons, I turned everyone into a Pikachu!

The last day... All of use were a little bit sleep deprived. After playing The Werewolves game three times, we cleand up the house and went outside. We took a bunch of grouppictures and then everyone had to return home. I really had one of the best times of my life and I feel so happy that I can call these people my friends. Everyone, thank you so much!

Chibi Sachiko-chan

Konnichipon!

I'm really sorry about last week's lesson. Therefore this lesson is bigger! Yay!

This week, I'm going to teach you the days of the week. It might look a little bit hard, but it's really easy! Try to remember them well ;)

Monday is 月曜日 (Getsuyoubi)

Tuesday is 火曜日 (Kayoubi)

Wednesday is 水曜日 (Suiyoubi)

Thursday is 木曜日 (Mokuyoubi)

Friday is 金曜日 (Kinyoubi)

Saturday is 土曜日 (Doyoubi)

Sunday is 日曜日 (Nichiyoubi)

Personally, I think the Kanji for 'you' is really hard. You probably saw that already. 

Hopefully everyone liked this lesson! By practising them really well, it should be easy to remember them. Good luck!

Please look forward to next week's new word!

また来週

TIPS: How to get enough sleep!

Hello!

For me, getting enough sleep seems impossible. I fail at sleeping at night, which results in that I can't get up in the morning. As I have to travel two hours before I arrive at school, I need to get up at 5:40 am, which is really tiring if you can't fall asleep before 1:00 am. That's why I decided to look for some tips to become a better sleeper and to share them with you.

This is my cute dog sleeping. She loves sleeping, but she also loves being energetic and for being energetic, you need the have had enough sleep!

1. Structure: Go to your bedroom to sleep at the same time everyday. You might not fall asleep immediately, because your body needs to get used to it, but after three weeks, you will sleep for sure. Also, get up at the same time everyday. It's really important your body will become used to it, because when you have structure, it will be so much more easy to fall asleep and get enough rest at night. A friend of mine told me a really good tip; an hour before you're going to sleep, go wash your face, brush your teeth and put on your pajamas (and eventually other things you need to do before you're going to sleep). When I tried this, I was more relaxed when I was going to sleep, which helped me falling asleep. Another important tip; short naps during daytime are forbidden!
2. Silence: Make sure you're sleeping in a room without many noises. Every noise you can hear might wake you up and you don't want that! If you have noisy neighbors, or you're living close to a highway/train station/big city/etc, make sure to get some earplugs. Sleeping in a dark room is also really important. If it's too light in your room, your body will think it's morning so you will wake up.
3. NO sports/caffeine/alcohol: Don't drink energy drinks, coffee or whatever that has caffeine in it before you're going to sleep. Just don't! Neither should you drink alcoholic drinks. You might feel relaxed because of the alcohol, but it will make you thirsty and you might become restless. If you want something to drink, it might be the best to drink some kind of herbal tea. Don't go sporting before you're going to sleep, because your body temperature will rise but it has to go down if you want to sleep. 
4. Mattress: Make sure the mattress you're sleeping on is comforteable for you! You won't get a good rest if your mattress isn't comforteable. If you prefer sleeping on hard mattresses, sleep on those because you it's better for you.
5. NO Smartphones/internet: Get a little box and put in your iPhone, iPod, Android or anything that gives you access to the internet. You're not going to check your mail anymore, you're not going to play silly games, you're going to sleep! So get those things out of your room!

Hopefully these tips will help you to get enough sleep! I'm going to use them for sure. 

Chibi Sachiko-chan

Chibi Sachiko-chan didn't finish her lesson yet, so it will be posted tomorrow!

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Sources:

http://mens-en-gezondheid.infonu.nl/leven/33177-hoe-kan-je-beter-slapen-tips-voor-een-betere-nachtrust.html

http://www.hoedoe.nl/lichaam-geest/slaap/hoe-krijg-ik-een-goede-nachtrust 

My own experiences

I went shopping ♪

Today, I went shopping with my mother and a neighbor in Essen, Germany.

Essen is a really beautiful city. They were making preparations for a big Christmas market, so there where little stalls with food everywhere. There was also a big Ferris wheel and I saw some Christmas trees.
But we didn't go there for the upcoming Christmas market, we went to Essen because of the Primark!

The Primark is a wonderful shop *w*
There are so many clothes and cute things and everything is really cheap. Ofcourse we returned home with way to many clothes. We also drank a cup of tea at a really cute cafe, were they sold all kinds of delicious looking ice cream and cake, but it was quite cold today, so we didn't buy any of them :(
We also ate a really good sandwich. Mine had boiled egg, cabbage and some kind of dressing on it. I really loved it.

Let me show you what I bought!

I got two pairs of shoes. The ones on the left are slippers. They are really soft and I love the little ribbons on it. I also bought a pair of high heels. Usually I don't wear those, because I'm already 173cm long and I don't want to be any longer... but I couldn't resist buying these. They're so cute and pretty!

I also got new skinny jeans. Bought two different colors. I love skinny jeans and the left ones feels really comfortable while wearing it.

Pajamas! If it was possible, I would wear pajamas all day long. This one has two cute cats on it and I love the pink color. I actually wanted to buy three pairs of pajamas, but my mother said it was too much.

I also bought a necklace, a belt, earrings, black tights and new underwear.

In another little shop I found some cute ladybug-like chocholate, so I also bought that.

I also bought a new toy for my dogs. You should have seen them when I gave it to them. They were so happy! Unfortunately, one of them gets really protective over the stuff we give to her, so I couldn't grab the toy away from her anymore.

I had lots of fun today! Can't wait to go again, but now, I'm going to sleep. Have a good night!

- Miyako

DIY: Holding Hands Calendar

Hello!

Do you know those "Tomorrow I'm going to do this and that!"-thoughts before you're going to sleep? And at the end of the next day, you realize that you didn't do anything? Well, I have these quite a lot. It's really annoying. Fortunately I found out about the following idea.

DO IT YOURSELF: Holding Hands Calendar

I'm told this idea is childish, but if it works, I don't care. The point from the calendar we're going to make is: Everyday, you write down what you are going to do. If you complete everything, you draw a stickman on that day of the calendar. Make sure it's hand can reach the other day! If you completed what you wanted to do everyday, you should have a long chain of stickman holding each others' hand. You don't want the stickman to be lonely without a friend to hold hands with right? So you better finish your stuff everyday! (You can also do this with a giant X on everyday, it's really annoying when there's a day without the stickman or X on it, because it will break the chain!)

Step 1

Find some stuff to work with! 

- Paper

- A Glue Stick

- Ribbons

- Stickers

- Markers, Pencils, Ballpoints

- Scissors

Step 2

Make a timetable. I used Word to make one, but ofcourse you can also make on by hand. It's just that I prefer something with proper lines. Don't forget to print it out!

Step 3

Cut off the edges and glue it on another paper with a nice color.

I used pink, because the color of my room is pink.

Step 4

This step is the most fun! Decorating!

Write down the days of the month (I made this one for this month only. So it goes from November 12 till November 30). Write down your appointments and the things you really want to do. After that's done, you can decorate it however you want. For example, I wrote the days of the week in Japanese, for practise.

Now you've finished your own 'Holding Hands'-calendar. It's super easy and fun to do!

I also added a little thing to this idea. After finishing your tasks from a certain day, you can reward yourself with sweets or your favorite cookie. For me, it works, hopefully it will also work for everybody with planning-problems. 

Special Step

Ofcourse you can also put the sweets in a random cup or bowl. 

But I thought it would be cute to fold one by myself!

Chibi Sachiko-chan

Konnichipon! *

I'm Chibi Sachiko-chan! Nice to meet you!

I'm here to support everyone and to teach you a little bit of Japanese. Please always try your best with everything you do. Be strong and be proud! Give it your all and don't forget to smile. It's okay to make mistakes sometimes, you're just human after all. 

Like I said: Every week, I'll teach you a Japanese word. This week I'll start with a really easy one. As I love cute things, I decided that this week the word will be: 

Kawaii

Cute

   

I tried my very best with the animation but I still have to learn a lot!

I'm pretty sure everyone knows when to use this word, but for those who don't, here are some examples:

When you're looking in the mirror while you're wearing a new cute skirt, you can say 'Kawaii!'

When a really cute dog is playing with a really cute cat, you can say 'Kawaii!'

Please look forward to next week's new word!

また来週！**

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*Konnichipon is Chibi Sachiko-chan's way of saying hello. In Japan, people say 'Konnichiwa!' when they're saying hi to each other. Instead of the 'wa', Chibi Sachiko-chan uses 'pon' to make it more cute.

**It says 'until next week!' in Japanese.

Hello and nice to meet you!

Hello!

Before I start with blogging, I thought it would be nice to introduce myself first.

I'm a 17-years-old girl from the Netherlands (so that explains why my English isn't perfect), when I'm on the internet, people usually call me 'Miyako', so I prefer being called like that. My real name is Loes Janssen. I have two pet dogs and I love them to bits. Currently, I'm in college studying Japanese.
I really love Japan and I'm a big fan of Japanese idol groups (mainly Hello! Project though) and my 'oshimen' is Takahashi Ai. I will probably talk about idols in this blog and I'll try not to fangirl, but if I do, please bear with me.

When I was little, I really loved drawing, I still do, but nowadays I'm more into singing and dancing. Please note that I'm horrible at both, especially at dancing. But by practising everyday, I'm trying to become better.

I've tried to run a blog several times before. "If you failed to run a blog several times, why did you create this one?" is what you might be thinking now. Well, let me tell you why I think I can handle a blog this time. I planned on it! Last times I randomly started a blog, with no schedule or plan, idea or anything. This time I've been working on it for a few weeks already. I decided that I wanted to blog about my daily life (ofcourse), but I will also try to make some easy DIY's and I thought it would be fun to include some 'health' tips sometimes. I decided that I'll start on a blogpost on Saturday, to post it on Sunday.
This blog will also include my personal 'lucky charm', Chibi Sachiko-chan (ちびさちこちゃん). She will teach you a Japanese word every week. She will introduce herself next time! Please be nice to her.

My first, official post will be a Do It Yourself! Please look forward to it!

- Miyako

11/11/2012: Please note that I'm still working on the lay out from this blog. It needs a blogheader! Working on it ♥