I put this out on the web for help

This is the post I put out to several communities asking for help translating/ understand the pattern/ making the pattern. I'm putting it here in case anybody who sees it this way wants to chime in with some help...
Coming soon are my Friday night outfit and cute kitten pictures!

Calling all you seamstresses, or those who can read Japanese (bonus points if you are both)! I've got this magazine (which I didn't scan...  :wink: ) that is full of patterns that you have to draw (draft? is that the right term?) Since I am all for having comfy clothes around the house and I am trying to learn to sew clothing, I thought that I might give one of them a try. Now I did take two years of Japanese, but sewing terminalogy wasn't exactly covered in the courses, so I am asking anyof you ladies and gents if you might be willing to help me out. I've given the pattern my best shot, and now am looking for help filling in the blanks, and for general sewing help.
Please feel free to give any help with the "translation"(I didn't actually "translate" anything, I just tried to sum up what I knew in my notes) if you can.
I've made notes all over the two pages that relate to this pattern, commenting on the sewing and the Japanese...
[img]http://i625.photobucket.com/albums/tt338/buttons_and_lace/Decorated%20images/042-1.jpg[/img]
Page 1
[img]http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w224/stormsight/Pattern%20scans/043.jpg[/img]
Page 2
[img]http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w224/stormsight/Pattern%20scans/005.jpg[/img]
On left, the completed dress; Magazine's picture of the completed project).
For those of you with any sewing experience, I would greatly welcome any help that you can give regarding this. I've never had to make a complex pattern like this from scratch to use for sewing, so I'm slightly nervous, but you have to learn sometime, right? Any tips/tricks?
Also, the waistband looks really complicated, and I would prefer if the dress was cut as once piece from top to bottom... but I want to keep the drawstring... do you reckon that I could leave off cutting the dress horizontally and just sew the back of the drawstring channel to the inside (does that make any sense?), instead of making the channel separately and then sewing the three pieces (top, waistband/drawstring, skirt) together ?