Where we all follow our dreams...

Hiiii!
Sorry for not updating for all this week, but I've been veeeeery busy! But I'm happy because my efforts were for something! I've been officially admitted in my japanese class, so I don't have to worry anymore ;v;
Anyway, today I wanted to publish here an essay I wrote some months ago for Rainbowholic contest ( http://the.rainbowholic.me/contests/japan-essay-contest-winners/#more-14798 ) about Japan and since I now have my own journal on the Internet, I suppose I should put it here. I got the 3rd place in that contest and I was veeeeery happy when I saw my name on Kaila's blog. I couldn't believe it! I even cried a little (yes, even aliens cry sometimes!).                                                                                                              

The World where we all follow our dreams

The first glimpse of Japanese culture I took was with manga and anime. Since I was little, I watched Sailor Moon, The Rose of Versailles and Saint Seiya on the TV and my mom always reminds  me how much I wanted to go to Japan even at that age.

When I grew up, I started getting more into anime and manga and at the same time, I started reading articles, books, blogs and everything I could get my hands onto about Japan. When I was 14, I stumbled upon a blog about Harajuku Fashion and it was love at first sight. At that time, I didn’t really care about my image, but when I found Decora, Visual Kei and Lolita, I wanted to look like the people I saw in street snaps and pictures.

My love for fashion has grown since then, when I took my first steps into Japanese fashion culture. At the age of 16, I really started dressing Lolita, but after a couple of years, reading magazines like Kera, Zipper and street-snaps blogs, I started wanting to make my own style. So, at 18, I started dressing how I felt, just letting my emotions go through my closet and my clothes. My style has been changing a lot, sometimes it is really colorful, other times I wear black&white outfits. I even uploaded an “evolution” album on my Facebook to show how much I had changed through the years.

Now my dream is to go to Japan, someday, feel all the things I have been watching from the distance, get a work there related to fashion or books. It’s a simple dream but just being there would be the happiest thing to me.

Japanese pop culture is under evolution, as it has been since I can remember. Trends come and pass by, but maybe now Japan is “absorbing” what’s on fashion nowadays. K-Pop is having a great impact worldwide, so it’s obvious that Japan, being nearer, must have been under its influence.
That’s what I like about Japanese pop culture. It’s always changing, adding new things and giving a special twist to everything, even if it comes from another country. But where I live, there is no such big boom about that.

Spain’s pop-culture is not as big as in Japan. There are communities scattered around my country, but I think the biggest ones are the Lolita community (like Lolita in Wonderland) and the Gyaru community. As they have some kind of rules that defines them, they’re easier to spot and they’ve had a bigger impact on the Spanish people. People who are not filed under any style are harder to find, as I have seen and I have been a Lolita too, my closer friends are also Lolitas. I’d like to find more people who dress freely and without boundaries, but I think that’s a question of time. Japanese pop-culture is starting to be well-known in Spain, so I hope one day we’ll see more kinds of fashion, because right now, culture around the world is under a big change.

There’s a worldwide crisis (in my country there are lot of problems related to it) and the younger generations grow up with the feeling that they’ll never have the opportunity to success in the fields they love. Lots of my friends are studying degrees they don’t really like just to be able to “survive” in the future. And that has an impact on culture, of course.
From what I’ve seen in fashion, resale and second hand shops are a big hit. They’re cheap clothes and they may be customized at your taste. That brings back clothing from other times, the ’70, the ’80 and the ’90, which were also times of change. Younger wants to show their spirit of fight from their clothes.

But there are a lot of opposites right now. We obsess over clothing. I obsess over clothing, I know I do. But I think, as I said, that we’re trying to fight for something better and bigger as  world peace and cultural harmony goes beyond that, but also starts from respect and love. One of the things I have to endure being part of this generation is others mocking me for dressing freely. If people could just accept differences, just starting by the way others dress, act or live, as long it’s in a respectful way, we would start caring for each other.

One of the things I like more is making presents. I can sew, knit and write short stories. I love giving stuff I have put effort into, because it’s a way to show love to others. It’s still materialistic, maybe, but it makes people happy. If we all started giving a little part of ourselves to others, freely, without expecting anything in change, maybe we could be better people and help our world to get better.
Kawaii, otaku and kakkoii culture is a start. We love cute things, so we should try making our world a “cuter” place. A place where we can love and live freely and happily. Where trees grow, where there are no wars, where people don’t suffer. Where we all follow our dreams.

I've always been strange, even on my planet... Too obsessed with the Earth!