October’s over, Halloween’s deleted. Today I used the Tarot Grand Luxe.
Something about it, I think it was the lion and the word “Luxe” made me think it was going to be Vegas-themed. Alas, it wasn’t, though it was still a good deck!
I can’t seem to find any Vegas-themed tarot decks, actually.
Today’s reading is interesting because it allows me to talk about two cards with seemingly similar meanings.
I feel like “Death isn’t actually bad” is the one thing that even those that have never seen a full tarot deck know. It’s such a “really now?” sort of thing, but it’s even more interesting when you think about what that actually means.
Death IS about death, about The End of things, but it’s less literal death and more the concept of things ending. For example, the expression “New Year New Me” immediately implies that the old year and the old you are dead in some way. The traditional symbolism of the card drives this even further bu showing that this end is in store for everyone, man or woman, young or old, literal royalty or so poor that they’re always right because they don’t even have words to eat.
So “Death means change” but The Wheel of Fortune also means change, so what gives?
Well, Death is inevitable metamorphosis while The Wheel of Fortune is about either more cyclical changes or random ones.
Reversed Death can be a reflection of a reluctance to change, but here’s an interesting reading of it: The card tends to depict people begging for that change to not come, what if the Reversed form is also indicative of being open to that change? To staring Death in its piercing blue eyes and going “Well, what took you so long?”.
I’m applying this reading because I don’t see anything I’m resistant to change as it were. For as much as I bitched and moaned the past two days, all of those matters are things I HAVE talked about with anyone it might be relevant to in private so if change has to happen it’s already underway (or at the very least I’ve put out there how I feel).
On the whole, I’d say today’s reading is saying to remember through the whole internal metamorphosis (that you can kinda see in real time since I started this blog) that though the world might throw seemingly random obstacles at you, they will all even out eventually.
The title of today’s post is related to the main “adventure” of today as it were.
I think I made passing mention of it before, but my landlady (that is, the one that charges me for the rent of the company’s office) asked me to print her “something anime”. Basically another one of her tenants is opening a small chinese food restaurant and wanted to have some sort of pamphlet to give away offering free meals, and she wanted something with an eye-catching anime girl in it to bring attention to it.
I decided to use this CG from Blue Archive because Chinese Food restaurant. I could’ve used Genshin for something more popular, but I’m kinda allergic to Genshin.
I like describing certain things as allergens because it’s like “I don’t hate this, but if it gets near me I get rashes”.
Back to the main topic, as I’m going to print it I realize I ran out of paper but that’s fine because I just bought a pack of paper the other day AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND the paper was blue.
That one’s on me, it says blue right there.
So I head out to a Family Mart to buy a pack of paper quickly and print it. I meet up with her and she asks me if the print can be bigger, taller (I made it the size of a 1000 yen bill initally). I say sure and to meet again in an hour. I take the chance to buy a paper cutter AND a pack of proper white paper.
Between the purchase, adjusting, printing, and cutting, one hour passes almost exactly. And I go back. I did this as a favor to her but she still gave me 3000 yen for the trouble.
You know, between this and the two books I sold at iDoll, I’m pretty sure I made more money with Graphic Design this year than at any point in my life.
So some of you might be wondering now why I’d go through all that trouble. And to be fair I’m simply a people pleaser in the end. But even beyond that, I did feel in a position of “this si the least I can do”.
You see, getting an apartment as a foreigner in Japan ain’t easy. In fact, I know from a realtor friend that landlords can specify to reject foreign applications. Now imagine trying to find a Japanese address not even with a visa but with “the promise that this dude is working really hard on getting a visa, he’s not gonna bail out on you”.
Yeah. She’s also a nice lady in general, though when I got in it was an old couple and the guy insisted people call him Papa (I never learned his actual name), but smoking and such got him. I never heard he died, last I heard he was “gone” which might just be super convalescent.
That said, that apartment building is lowkey cursed.
The day I went to check it, the unit to the right of mine was vacated in that very specific “someone died here” way and to this day it remains sealed with a couple of locks on the outside. Literal Skyrim “exposition as you enter the new guild” moment.
I was pestered by Soka Gakkai cultists. The first time they held me on the door for AN HOUR trying to tell me that my mystic heavens man is fake but THEIR heavens man is real. Soka Gakkai is supposedly BUDDHIST BY THE WAY.
One time an old man knocked on my door demanding to see his old friend that apparently lived there before me and I had to tell him I didn’t know him with Google TL on my phone.
There was also that one time where I found a BDSM magazine on my mailbox. After checking what the fuck while wondering if I ordered it by accident I noticed that it was supposed to have a CD and there was no CD so someone decided to make their porn stash more economical.
It checks out too since sometimes I’d see pages from manga magazines ripped and thrown to the side of a nearby road.
After a year or so living there I checked a cabinet I didn’t know was there and I found a REALLY old hotpot plate from one Tanaka.
The AC unit that was in the apartment was old but worked, and when I tried to use it in summer it made a loud noise and it started spewing hot air. I didn’t have the landlords’ number and this was my first year so I had to survive Japanese summer without an AC until they came to pick up the rent and I was able to tell them about the AC problem.
There was this transwoman sex worker that saw me going to the conbini one time and asked me if I wanted some fun. I told her no thanks, and then every so often she would knock on my door at like 1am to ask me if I wanted some fun… which I proceeded to reject.
I’m just not a casual sex type of person despite how horny on main I am, what can I say.
Pretty sure I’ve seen her working as an Uber Eats driver since though. You might think “Fer, you can’t just assume every transwoman is the same” and I must remind you this is Japan and certain types of people stick out like a sore thumb from their low numbers. And I can say that because I’m a non-white, non-asian foreigner, I stick out like a sore thumb.
Anyway, during the pandemic I remember smelling something nasty and joking “sheesh did an animal die or something?” and the next day I wake up and there’s cops outside one of the units because someone died of COVID inside of that unit.
It does wonders when you’re living alone for the first time in your life, isolated from everyone you knew, and constantly afraid of dying alone and nobody noticing.
Did I mention that an ambulance would be outside of that building without failure at least twice a week?
One time I heard screams and I was ready to call the cops until I realized it was just very loud sex moans echoing. Mind you it’s a building with concrete walls despite being old so for it to echo that hard they had to be fucking with their door half open. Which wasn’t unheard of because the old man on the unit AFTER the locked up one slept in summers with a crocs sandal propping open the door.
If I had a nickel, etc.
…actually, there was another transwoman. Kinda. There was a guy that lived near the end of the hallway and he would only leave out at night with a long dress, clearly getting used to the shift in wardrobe.
I only misgender because of the lack of confirmation before I moved out. For all I knew they might’ve just dressed like that for unrelated reasons. It’s a weird building, I don’t put away the possibility.
OH also apparently the upper floors have (or had) a yakuza office… Yamaguchi Gumi if stress-blurred memory serves right?
It was home for almost three years though, and it’s still an office that I need to seriously clean up.
To give you an idea, the fact that in my current building people actually greet you if they see you in the lobby is like… still shocking to me compared to how “do not perceive me” people are in the old one.
Beyond that, I went to Japanese lesson and I had to call off meeting up with an acquintance visiting the country so that I can catch up on the things I left aside from daring to be out of my house for three whole days.