Be carefull that the colors of the palette are harmonizing with each other and that there's a transition for possibly each for preferencial smooth gradients.
When making palettes think of the black/white balance, depending what it is for, dull things are often not so balanced and often have a gray tone to it, like a city would happen to be!

Best thing you can do is play around with different color variations, studies mostly! You will get into the teachings of colorusage pretty easy if you deal with it
Most artists prefer to use pastel-tones, as they are easy for the eye, instead of high-saturated colors as shown above, those do not match with the Ichiraku Ramen shop you've shown as example, it is rather unsaturated, I guess it's been mentioned before...

Yeah...

http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/42994.htm?sec=date

Just wonderous that he gives credit on the non-important websites, not on those where he is "someone"

Made an edit and worked on the legs
I think they still are too masculine though, but I don't have much time anymore so I'm uploading this XD
I rounded up the breast because no boobs have edges like that heh...
So yeah...
Maybe adding 1 more color would make it smoother :O