Growing Old but Never Growing Up

I couldn't think of another way to write this title - yep, another year has come and gone but I still feel the same apart from the fact that I can spend the day showering myself with gifts. Take this unicorn balloon, for instance... Isn't it magical? I've loved unicorns ever since I was a child and I still have my unicorn plushie that I got when I was around 8 years old. Some people would call me sad, but I call myself a "big kid".

I wasn't too sure what to wear this year - I wanted to be cute and wear pink, but I'm also super excited for Halloween and wanted to channel goth vibes so I thought... Why not do both? And here I am! I want to do this a lot more because I had so fun wearing it and I felt a lot more than myself. I love agejo, don't get me wrong, but it's nice to wear something completely different every now and then. I feel like a gothic princess when wearing this and for once I'm happy that it's not absolutely boiling outside so that I can wear my darker wardrobe.

Disneybound Mulan: If Mulan was Gyaru...

Vest: Boohoo / Distressed shorts: Boohoo / Jersey kimono: Boohoo / Over the knee boots: Boohoo / Khaki metal trim back pack: New Look / Dragon necklace: eBay / Bow & arrow scaffold bar earrings: New Look / Silver bangles: New Look

When my friend Amy from Scariel's Grotto first asked me to do this Disneybound post I immediately thought of Mulan. It's one of my favourite Disney films (together with Big Hero 6 and Zootropolis) so I was really excited to do this. I began to flick through some of the clothes Mulan wore before settling on her armour (I hated the colours in her dresses) and started gathering some ideas.

I then began to think... What would Mulan be like if she was gyaru? She definitely wouldn't be the himekaji type (no way can I image her in cute floral dresses), nor something like agejo or tsuyome. It finally clicked when I was looking through some pictures of onee gyaru and came across some old pictures of Sayoko Ozaki. Mulan would look awesome with onee gyaru makeup, although her badass character would definitely make her more ane gyaru. I then had a look at clothes in Western stores to make an outfit that's easy to buy, as well as some pictures of onee/ane gyaru outfits and makeup.

My Go-To Jfashion Stores Outside of Japan

Buying Jfashion items outside of Japan was such a nightmare for me when I first started getting into gyaru. I remember longing for a beautiful Liz Lisa dress only to learn that I couldn't buy it directly from their website and that I needed some sort of shopping service, and at the time it went straight over my head.

Nowadays it's all too easy for me to buy Jfashion goodies - hence why I'm forever broke - but I still get a lot of questions from those wanting to get into it on where I get my clothes/accessories/stationery from. Below I have compiled a list of my absolute favourites who I've had really good experience with, just to give you a bit of a helping hand! I've labelled what kind of fashion they'd suit as well as not all of them are just gyaru-focused.

Todai-ji Temple and Butt-Biting Deer in Nara

While I did not enjoy getting my butt bit by a deer, it was an experience going to Nara. It was quite far from where we were staying in Kyoto so we made the decision to just visit the Todai-ji Temple and boy did we make a good choice. I had no idea just how harmoniously people could interact with nature, and it was amazing! Kudos to Japan for doing this, as it's not the kind of thing I've ever seen in the U.K. especially when all of the deer were wild...

We started our journey on an extremely slow train where we were surrounded by a boisterous tourist group who could not stop talking. I was so thankful when we finally arrived in Nara, and we instantly hopped onto a bus to take us all the way to the top of the hill to Todai-ji Temple. It was amazing how everything had an English translation - I felt a bit guilty of that I only knew a handful of Japanese phrases that I learnt from anime - so if you don't know a word of Japanese, you'll be fine. We could tell we were in the right place as the number of deer got larger when we went further up, so we hopped off the bus and began our walk to the Todai-ji Temple.