Here is a letter from my blogger friend Stephen Barrett  in Japan. 

 I sometimes see them and usually at night they are even more impressive with shiny lights and loud music thumping. The truth is that Japan has a lot of custom super cars! I see almost one every day and the styles vary. And I thought the supped up lower rider was something? 
 Most of the additional parts use hydrolics to literally transform the car into different looks. This group of people who spend vast amounts of money and time on their cars consists of mostly young to middle aged men who dress in extreme fashion as well. I chose an example below. This is the type of guy I would expect to step out of one of those extreme machine cars, not a nerdy guy in a suit.
 Japan is a country that loves Manga/Anime and some will proudly spend big bucks to show their affinity. Just one of the sides of Japan that makes it such an interesting place to live

Recently I never wear my glasses, as I lost my favorite glasses T_T I never know how bad the effect (of not wearing glasses) until today. I even cannot read the nearest presentation’s monitor. Wew… that’s quite bad. Last semester I was manage to read it even though I was hardly to do it.
 This reminds me, I have a best friend who refuse to wear glasses from the moment she knew she has to wear glasses. She only wear it in class—like me. Then I asked her, “nande?”. She said, “It’s a blurry nice world”. Now I really now what she means about that. In my early years here, I put my glasses on the top of my veil, so that sempai (which I didn’t see) would be ok to know I’m not say hi to them simply because I didn’t see them, coz I’m not wearing my glasses. Well I don’t have to do that anymore now, since my sweet kohai try to say hi even when I didn’t see them. Well, it’s a kohai-sempai thing. Hehehe…
 Yah anyway, I’m waiting for rainy season, coz it would make world even blurrier with it’s fog. Many people don’t like rain. But I love it. I even love stormxD… Well maybe because my father had a training in England when I was a child, and he gave me a lot of photos, stories, and European dolls, I always have this natsukashii-feeling about Europe thing, include the weather. I notice how it’s gloomy with it’s fog. This morning at amphiteather, I tried to catch colors and draw in my crayon-sketch. Sadly to say, I must admit I’m losing my sense to catch and define colors. I turned to sketches and comic when I was junior high school. From that time, I almost didn’t touch my canvas, oil paint and crayon. Well, sometimes I still draw my media-art-work in crayon though. During my adolescence, I have a very dark world. A closed room, dark-mellow kind of music, and computer of course. The ‘bloody’(literally meaning) fingers typed so fast, trying to pull myself form the reality that I live. I was a possessed writer. Possesed by my alter ego who really tired of living. I remember my written-works during that time are mostly thriller or mystery story such as goosebumps. During that time, my novel’s ending scene are usually about death. I always kill one of the main character. I guess it’s the really first moment of me releasing all the colors in my life, coz I didn’t find it suitable with my character.
 Even though years after that my mentality was getting better, I joined a sketch class to take a pass-exam for art major in ITB, it made me even forgot about colors. Since in sketch, we must be able to define a lot things with one black pencil. I then tried to do media-digital design, which almost make me stopped using my hands-stroke. Well.. yeah I really almost lose the foundation of my talent. Yesterday I buy myself a watercolor paint. This is a really new thing for me, as I never paint with those. All I did when I was younger were oil-painting, crayon, sketches, and recently photoshop. Hmmm… now after I wrote it, in facts, I must be glad as I’d tried different kind of art-drawing technical. Alhamdulillah. Before learning about sketches, I almost know nothing about shadow. My paint always has a contrast-unblended colors. Now, with this blurry eyes, and capability to emerge colors as one level shadows, I hope I could learn a new kind of art drawing. Hope I could catch up the colorblind degradation.
 Now I have a new format of 2D animation in my head. I kinda related it to children storybook and storytelling, my new focus of learning. The one that I really like about this new 2D format, it’s more me and it wont takes a long time to produce it. Since I must consider my classes, seminar, my baito, T,T and don’t forget my future thesissss. I take 3 classes of design and communication, and 1 seminar about Popular Culture. Quite a lot for one 4months semester. Especially when 2 of them are Mantello’s. And who’s Prof. Mantello? That would need a new blog post. I’m trying to improve my illustration skill and apply for a freelancer for magazine and cover-book illustration by the end of this semester.
Hohoho… quite a big dream? Not really if you related to my age. LOL. After I graduate, then I start to think to work in Advertising and Filming industry as my main job. My side jobs would be a lot! Novelist, children storybook illustrator, a book-café owner, have a fashion line, and of course (one of) my ultimate dreams is making business properties with my father’s last name. Hehehehe… I have so many things to returned to my family and friends, include love. Don’t afraid to dream things, coz insyaAllah, eventually you will achieve them one day… One of the time… You must have faith about it! Come on, get your own start, and race with my speed…
;) Beppu, Oct 7th 2008, modified the day after