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I have a kind of odd question. What I will have isn't necessarily a weapon, but I wanted to check just in case.

I am planning on making a doctor/apothecary steampunk costume for the theme gathering in 2011. For part of the costume I was wanting to make a backpack with specimen jars on the outside and filling them with things that looked like medicine.

As long as nothing in them is actual medicine/flammable/ not given to other people/etc...should this be ok?

For example I was planning on filling one jar with peppermint tea to look like herbs or another with a candy like good and plenty to look like pills.

Would it be ok to just come and get this inspected/peace bonded say if the jars are glued shut or should I bring the materials (like the good and plenty in the box), show the staff doing the peacebonding, and let them watch me put it into the jars so they know exactly what it is?

Thanks, and sorry if this is confusing. I just wanted to check in before I start making this. =)

Man..I would love to go but I'll be shipping out to Hawaii around that time. =(

It sounds like a really fun idea though so hope people show up and have a fun time.

btw... Doesn't matter if it's a year old or not. I actually rented and watched this movie because I saw YOU cosplaying and was then interested in the movie. You should actually ask Disney for your royalties now.

Also...

I'm curious if anyone also knows Chinese here? I would really like to learn Japanese as well but I'm wondering how the sounds of the characters will affect this. I've learned the characters to mean one thing in Chinese, and it seems that they're usually pretty similar in Japanese but I'm not sure of hte sounds.

Does anyone have any tips for when I start getting into the language about this little issue?

Try watching anime subtitled (see how much you can pick up on just by doing that)

Once you get proficient enough, you can take it up a notch and just get rid of the subtitles to see how much you can understand without a translation. I think at about 3 years of college classes (according to an internet guy by the name of GaijinPunch, at least) and about a thousand of vocab words would be a good point to be searching for anime without subs. Oh, and don't forget to use a dictionary for words you don't know while watching. I'd rather you enjoy the show, then note down the words you don't know if you still remember them and study off those for a while. It works for me, at least.

I hate reading subtitle while listening to anything japanese because it confuse me so much. The structure of the japanese language seem to be really different from the English language.

It all depends on preference. Personally, I agree with you on this notion because it seems really difficult for me to technically multi-task between hearing Japanese audio and reading English text, all at fast speeds and rapid succession, too. Some people can pull it off, but IMHO, it more often than not hinders my enjoyment of the content I'm trying to watch.

Also, yes, the Japanese sentence structure takes some getting used to, but the key thing, according to Tae Kim, is that you can have a functioning sentence with just a single verb. The verb is usually the crux of the Japanese sentence structure, considering that almost every Japanese sentence usually ends with one. It shouldn't really take too long to get used to it, but I can't really speak for everyone when it comes to how fast certain people learn things.

Even if you can't understand what is being said, watching the anime with subtitles will still help your listening skills. I just got done with a 1 1/2 year Chinese course at the DLI and this was something we did a lot. My classmate and I watched close to a hundred Chinese movies and honestly just listening to the sounds, pronunciation, and pattern of the language will help you even if you can't understand it.

In the end my classmate and I were able to get an amazing score on our listening final so I know this will help! Just keep up on your vocabulary and little by little you'll be able to understand things.