Chibi Sachiko-chan

I'm sorry for the lack of Chibi Sachiko-chan post. I couldn't find the time to make them!
I decided that she won't be here weekly, but hopefully she will be here soon again!

モーニング娘。が大好き！

As I'm a BIG Morning Musume. fan, I thought it would be nice to make a blogpost about them!
This blogpost will be a little summary about the group that I love.

Morning Musume. is a Japanese idol group, it's a part of Hello! Project. It was founded in 1997 and they started of with 5 members; Nakazawa Yuko (Leader), Ishiguro Aya, Iida Kaori, Abe Natsumi and Fukuda Asuka. They had their official debut with the song 'モーニングコーヒー'.

In 1998 the second generation (Yasuda Kei, Yaguchi Mari and Ichii Sayaka) joined, which made a total member count of 8.
In 1999, Fukuda anounced her graduation and so did Ishiguro Aya. Goto Maki was added to the group and they released their biggest hit until now, 'LOVEマシーン'. The current Morning Musume. still sings this song at every concert.
In 2000 the fourth generation joined. This generation brought 4 new girls; Ishikawa Rika, Yoshizawa Hitomi, Tsuji Nozomi and Kago Ai. Ichii graduated from the group.
In 2001 the leader Nakazawa Yuko graduated from Morning Musume. Iida and Yasuda became Morning Musumes new co-leaders. At the end of 2001 the fifth generation joined. This is my favorite generation. Takahashi Ai (my oshimen), Niigaki Risa, Ogawa Makoto and Konno Asami debuted with 'Mr.Moonlight ～愛のビッグバンド～'
2002 was the year of big changes. Goto graduated and some of the sub-units and shuffles got new members, while the original members left.
In 2003 Yasuda graduated. The sixth generation joined, with Fujimoto Miki, Kamei Eri, Michishige Sayumi and Tanaka Reina. Also, in 2003 Morning Musume. got split up into two subgroups, called Morning Musume Sakura Gumi and Morning Musume Otome Gumi. This way they could tour more cities.
In 2004, the face of Morning Musume, Abe Natsumi, graduated. Tsuji and Kago left to focus on their new duo called 'W'.
In 2005 Iida graduated, making Yaguchi the new leader. Unfortunately, Yaguchi got caught in a scandal and had to retire. 4th gen Yoshizawa became Morning Musumes new leader. Ishikawa graduated and the seventh generation got added. 'Miracle' Kusumi Koharu was the only one that made it to the group.
In 2006, Konno and Ogawa graduated. Auditions for the eight generation started.
In 2007 Yoshizawa graduated from the group. Fujimoto became the next leader, but she retired from the group, making Takahashi the new leader. Mitsui Aika joined as the eight generation, but after some months, two Chinese "exchange students", Junjun and Linlin, joined also as the eight generation, making the eight generation consist of 3 girls.
Till 2009 the line up from the group was stable. Nothing changed till the graduation from the Miracle, Kusumi. Her graduation marked the end of Morning Musume's longest lasting line-up.
In 2010, sixth generation Kamei, and eight generation Junjun and Linlin graduated from Morning Musume. Morning Musume only had 5 members at this point, just like when the group was founded. It was announced that there would be a new group called 'Dream Morning Musume'. The group consisted of old graduated members and released one single and an album.
In 2011, Fukumura Mizuki, Ikuta Erina, Sayashi Riho and Suzuki Kanon joined as the ninth generation. Also, the shocking announcement was being made, that Takahashi Ai would graduated from the group in October. I found out about Morning Musume right after the ninth generation joined. I didn't know that my favorite member, Ai-chan, was going to graduate, so it was quite a slap in the face when I found out about that. At her graduation concert, the tenth generation joined. Iikubo Haruna, Ishida Ayumi, Kudo Haruka and Sato Masaki had their official debut in 2012.
In 2012 Niigaki graduated together with Mitsui. Michishige Sayumi became the new leader, starting a new era. Oda Sakura joined the group as the 11th generation. Tanaka anounced her gradatuation from the group, so she can start with her band activities in 2013.

I love Morning Musume with all my heart!

- Miyako

A week full of partying~ ♫

Hello!

Sorry for the late post. I had some things to do this weekend :)

Last week, we celebrated 'Sinterklaas' in the Netherlands. Sinterklaas is Saint with a long white beard that brings present to the good children. If the children were naughty, his helper Zwarte Piet will come and take them with him in a bag back to Spain. I don't really know how to explain Sinterklaas, but let's just say that it's quite similair to Christmas and Santa Claus.

Me and my siblings are already too old to believe in Sinterklaas, but we still celebrated it. My parents even gave us presents. Most of it was candy though, but I really liked it!

I got the final Harry Potter movie on DVD. Now I finally completed the whole serie. You should know that Harry Potter is very important to me, as I grew up with it. Haha, on the first picture you can see that my dad got some kind of coffee.

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Saturday I went to a concert with my mum, dad and little sister. We went to a concert from Nick & Simon, they are a Dutch singing duo. Even though I really don't like Dutch music, I really like them. Their songs are catchy and personally, I think the two of them are funny.

I had the time of my life, singing along with (almost) all of their songs. Next year, I want to go again for sure!

They sing really good live! I must admit Nick (right) sounded a little bit forced and his voice was a little higher in pitch than usual, but they still sounded super good! My favorite is Simon, the one on the left.

For privacy reasons, I turned us into a Torchic

My mum and I took a picture together :D

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This week, I also won two pictures (one of them is even signed!) from Kikkawa You. She's a Japanese idol and she's really cute. I'm so happy! I'll post pictures as soon as I've received them.

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Chibi Sachiko-chan's lesson will be up tomorrow. 

To make up for the lateness, here is a cute picture from one of my dogs:

She is so silly, playing with the curtains.

- Miyako

Japanese calligraphy

Hello!

This week, we tried Japanese calligraphy (衝動) at college.
It's a form of artistic writing and it looks really pretty (when you're good at it).
The teachers showed us a video were they explained how to do this. After that video, one of our teachers showed us how she wrote her own name and then we got to task to write our own name in katakana.
My name in katakana is quite boring, so after practising writing it three times I switched to some more fun stuff. Kanji!

For privacy reasons, I turned us into a Plusle and Minun

The one on the left is me~ As you can see, I'm not really good at doing this. The girl next to me however, is really good at it in my opinion. She wrote 'genki' which is hard to translate into another language, but I guess 'energetic' and 'healthy' would be close enough. I wrote 'ongaku' which means 'music'.

'Genki' is probably my favorite Japanese word. I really love writing it too.

During the Japanese workshops at school we always do such fun things. A few weeks ago we tried origami folding. I failed at doing that, but still, I really love doing it. Here are some old pictures from that time (I made two hats for my dogs, so cute)

Aren't they adoreable! Okay, I must admit that the one on the left (named Sientje) didn't really like it. She gets scared when we put things on her head. But the other one (which is named Ira) didn't really mind it.

For next week's Japanese workshop, we will have to explain 'Sinterklaas' and the way we celebrate it here in the Netherlands, to our Japanese teachers. Hopefully it will be as much fun as the other workshops!

Chibi Sachiko-chan

Konnichipon!

Did everyone have a nice week? Here it's getting colder and yesterday I saw the first snowflakes falling down! I don't really like the cold, but the snow looks really pretty and gives such a cozy feeling.

Todays lesson will be:

Tsuki

Moon

The kanji for moon (月) has a lot of different meanings, but I won't bother you with all of them. This kanji is also used in the Japanese word for Monday (which you can read about here) 月曜日, but it's pronounced like 'getsu' instead of 'tsuki'.

Don't you think the kanji kinda looks like a moon? I think it does! It's really easy to write too!

From now on, I will start taking requests for words. So if there's a word you would like to know, leave a comment down below and maybe I will talk about it next week!

また来週

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