Today’s deck is the Momokchan Tarot.
We do stan Luna Factory in this house, but I will point out that the box made me think Mokmokchan was some cartoon character with a big nose ala Moomin at first.
Today’s reading continues the trend about feeling like I’m stuck in an unfavorable situation with work, but it also slipped one extra card while shuffling effectively saying “you’re on the cusp of making a choice”.
Ominous.
Weather is still kinda blegh, mood is MOST DEFINITELY still blegh, but it’s not AS rainy at least.
Since I’ve been in the mood of framing and hanging stuff, I decided to check my storage unit for two specific thing I had framed ages ago.
One is the poster that came with the first set of VA-11 Hall-A vinyls, and the other was a poster that came with the first edition of Ishikei’s manga compilation.
I’ll show them off when I find them a good spot. I also took the chance to bring back some extra stuff with me, older promotional things and whatnot.
I took a walk to find a frame for a different poster and my mood had improved a little bit. I gotta remind myself that there’s a reason why I decided last year to travel once a month.
These are the new additions to the walls. The two on the sides I’ve posted here before, but the one in the middle I got at the end of last year, on the trip to Ise I took before this one.
It’s of Megu Aoshima, Ise’s mascot of sorts (notably an original one instead of an Onsen Musume which is more common to see), and I have a little bit of history with her.
I became aware of her around… 2015 when the “controversy” with her happened. You see, the character was made as an official prefectural mascot around 2014 with the intent of bringing attention and revitalizing the industry and history of female divers in the region.
Ise is known, among other things, for its pearls, which were traditionally farmed by female divers who held their breath while they went down.
I became aware of her because around 2015 she became unofficial (though de facto still official) due to the intent with her being misunderstood as making light of the history and whatnot because something something anime girl misogyny something (something you still see nowadays here and there, really).
But ironically, in learning about the controversy I was like “holy cow female divers? that sounds so cool!” so it still followed her mission in a funny way.
So imagine my surprise when I go to Ise in 2023 for the first time for my birthday and I see her all over the place in the area. It’s extra noteworthy because 2015 is a lost year for me, the stress of working on Valhalla and other stuff means I literally cannot remember much from that year, it’s just… a big hole.
In fact, I had to double check which year was when the “controversy” happened because my brain assumed if I could remember it then it wasn’t 2015.
But yeah, aside from nice design and neat mission/history, having that moment of seeing her again in Ise through all the twist and turns of life is what made her stick with me I think.
It reminds me a little of when I learned that Hikaru Aoyama was in one of the Nikke stageplays and I was like “holy shit she was literally one of the first people I followed on Twitter in like 2013!”.
Also behold! The moment I realized that wall was pure concrete (I’d never tried to nail anything in that one specifically).