Today’s deck is the Black Violet Tarot.
I REALLY dig the style of this one, only complaint I have (and it’s reaching hard for any) is that me and the color purple don’t see eye to eye (with my complexion it makes me look sickly pale).
Today’s reading reflects general internal feelings, a sort of concern about whether or not I’ll be fine in an activity but ultimately just… overthinking things.
Plan today was to go to a live house.
In short order we dressed up with that in mind and headed out to Shinsaibashi. We stopped by Shake Shack for a quick meal before we entered, though.
Once inside I quickly realized how out of place I was dressed in a white shirt in a concert but eh…
The bit that surprised me and that keeps surprising me for some reason is how nostalgic the tactile feeling of a concert is to me.
I grew up surrounded by musicians, some of my earliest memories were being by sound systems and feeling the music in my chest… literally. This is relevant because I was worried I might be too overstimulated after the whole thing, but I was just fine.
There was actually a family with a little girl in the concert and she had baby-sized pink noise canceller headphone… things. I wasn’t afforded that luxury, it was tinnitus for young Fer.
There were four bands in the card.
The show opener was Cran Arcanaria, a female-led V-kei band from Nagoya, AKA, a fucking Nagoya-kei band. God bless them, Nagoya-kei feels like a dying breed nowadays. They were great, but the noteworthy thing was how their merch was basically tailormade for E’s aesthetics.
Later we came to the realization that Nagoya-kei is a very good equivalent to midwest emo in the US and we’re still grappling with the revelation.
Next was Valhalla from Osaka. The fact that their music was the one I vibed with the most is a funny detail that does not escape me, I assure you. They were also the only ones selling white shirts which I appreciate.
Third on the card was Japanese Folk Metal from Tokyo. They opened their set by literally cracking beers open and the centerman had a samurai kabuto made out of beer cans and a snapback on top of wearing a necklace of skull LEDs. They ruled. They also sold their CD in casette form.
The main act… okay, that wording is odd because to be fair, all the acts right before had basically the same screentime and billing and whatnot but they were nonetheless the ones featuring the biggest on the poster.
ANYWAY main act was Fathomless Skywalker, and with all respect to the other bands because they all ruled hard, FS definitely feels the most… experienced? If nothing else the most polished when it comes to stage presence.
Again, less than zero shade towards the others.
Then the encore hits and the song they started playing sounded an awful lot like one from Japanese Folk Metal… turns out it’s a collab, and then the centerman from JFM comes out and joins in, and then everyone else that played before hangs out on the stage.
That combined with seeing the other bands hang around and some even joining in the mosh pit was a really cool feeling. It’s the sort of vibe I love seeing creators have. Just people that think each other’s stuff is cool, vibing with each other.
After the mandatory purchase of merch where E bought so many shirts from Cran Arcanaria that it short-circuited their PA’s brain for a moment, we headed back…
…..and then headed back out.
We wanted to try Astrophotography, or at least as much as one can do of it in the middle of the city.
I took the smart telescope I bought on Christmas that I haven’t been able to use. I was trying out to handle it manually like a fool but turns out I can just tell it “look for the moon” and it’ll spin around and find the moon and take a composite photo.
It can also find other random astral bodies registered and take pics of them… that’s when it went “this photo session will take 4 hours”.
Curious how those would turn out but not right now, the device doesn’t even have enough battery and I’m pretty sure the sun will come out in less than that.
E took some photos with the IR camera she modded a while ago.
We headed back when it was almost 3AM, meaning we spent two hours and change just taking pics of the sky and going “Ohhhhhhhhhh”.
It keeps the worms away, what can I say?