ネイルモデル。How I got an (almost) free gel manicure!

I love my nails. I'm always happy and thankful my mom has nice nails and I took after her there. (Though it would have been nicer if I got he long legs too TT)

Anyway, point is I Iove painting my nails. Since like JC. But because of 就活 ( shukatsu short for 就職活動 which is the crazy job hunting phase all undergrads have to undergo to find a job) I had to keep them naked for a long time. 

Did this myself 2 summers ago. Still love it!

So last month after getting our job offers Olivia an I immediately went to colour our hair and get our nails done as an act of rebellion to celebrate the end of our 就活.

I was being very indecisive as usual, but the girl was really patient and suggested ideas and colours etc. In the end I decided to go with a French manicure in the end that wasn't too 派手 (ha-de; eye catching. Sometimes means gaudy) because I had a couple of interviews left. 

When the nailist saw me taking photos she went and took out flowers for me! So nice la. 

Anyway, after having pretty nails for 3 weeks I fell in love having something pretty to look at when I held onto the hand grips on the train :x and not having ugly chipped nails after a few days. 

Still perfect after a week :))

So when my nails grew out and became ugly... I wanted to get them done again haha.

But then I thought to myself. 

I can't be spending almost a hundred bucks on nails every few weeks right. I mean for hair, okay lah since it's like once every few months but for something that grows out and gets ugly in 2 weeks... No. 

And then I remembered Wee Kian showing me an ad about nailists looking for people to be their nail models for a competition and how I would get people offering to cut my hair for free while walking on the streets in shibuya because they were looking for people to practice on. (It's not as scary as it sounds, hairstylists in Japan have to go through rigorous schooling and apprenticeship before they can even offer to cut people's hair)

So I was like 💡💡💡💡

I would do the same for nails!

And then I looked around and found this application 

Nailists looking for people to practice on = Yayyy! Free gel nails! :D 

So I made an appointment after school and went down to shinjuku. Seemed pretty easy to find, get out from 西口 and walk straight. But I was wrong TT

It was raining and a little bit hard to find >< I was looking for a sign sticking up on top like the rest or something but

That tiny sign on the top left of that door was all there was lol. I passed this building so many times while looking for it! In the end I got there like 15min late but they were really nice about it :))

The place was called No Nail Tokyo. Funny name for a nail place lol. 

Removing the previous gel manicure. Took like almost an hour. 

Done! It was supposed to only be like a flat one colour manicure but I really wanted to get colourful spring-coloured nails. So in the end I talked to them and they let me have 3 colours :D

The whole thing, including removal of my precious grown out gel nails only cost me 1500jpy! Hehe. 

With my nailist! Who was super accommodating and cute (her head is so small?!!?) happens to be a fan of Shinee and we spent half the time talking about kpop haha. 

Anw they told me afterwards that like because my appointment was just for one flat colour I had to pay do the extra sparklies, but if I made an appointment with a nailist who was practicing designing nails then nail art would be free! Whaaat. Definitely going back in 2 weeks hehe.