Today’s deck is the Floating World Tarot.
Its theme is neat, it’s meant to be traditionally Japanese kinda, but stylized. It’s not that self-proclaimed “manga” like some decks I’ve used in the past.
For this trip I specifically brought three mats that are way too big for my daily stuff so it was better to use them in a less cluttered room.
Today’s reading includes the reversed Ace of Swords again. It basically says that in those times where I doubt myself and I need to recalculate, I should focus on courage and intuition to get through it.
You know, I’m realizing that the main thing with the court cards is that they represent inner qualities, personality qualities. There’s cards that can indicate you’re being stubborn about a situation, but the court cards are the ones that properly convey “stubborn person” or “stubborn moment”.
Today’s doodle page has me losing hair trying to draw a bottlecap. You think it’¿s just a cilinder but then you notice how it curves and boom goes your head.
After failing I tried to do the perspective cubes thing, I might do that more because it’s shockingly tricky.
I also want to start practicing expressions more, since one of the things I want to do iws basically short gag drawings and I feel like expressiveness is paramount to that.
So to put things simply, today I slept like hell.
It wasn’t the bed, it wasn’t me not being tired. What happened was that for some reason the room heating was set at 30 FUCKING DEGREES. What didn’t help was that I get hot easily but also get cold easily, so I would normally take the bedsheet off and then on whenever I ended up as too much of one or the other, so being half asleep as I was (or just trying to not fully wake up to not dispel whatever sleepiness I had) I didn’t notice that something was wrong with the room itself.
For the record, I don’t have control of that thermostat, in fact, I see it change temperature all the time so I assume the intent is for people to warm the room up and then turn it off.
That or someone at the front desk wanted me cooked.
This hotel calls itself “ancient” and while they definitely follow the aesthetic it’s too modern to be actually ancient. I don’t doubt it was rebuilt at some point mind you.
They even have a small temple on the back.
I then decide to go down to the temple running on empty having eaten nothing because I know for a fact everything closes super early and it’s already 2PM.
First things first I go get cash at an ATM and oh my god even the ATM has an omikuji.
I got Normal Luck today, apparently if you get a Daikichi (big luck) you can trade it in for a bookmark… somewhere.
The town is as I remember it… actually that’s not fully true because I came here in summer so I remember it with less shadows.
No, for real, I need to find those pics but I was walking at midday and the zenithal sun left no shadows.
When I approached the actual entrance to the temple some people from NHK wanted to interview me. It must’ve been a slow day because I’m usually not white or black or tall enough to catch their attention.
Told ’em no thank you.
I didn’t know this the first time I ame here last year, but Ise Jingu is the temple Amaterasu is said to be housed. I keep saying Izanami but that’s Iya Shrine.
…I should make a note to go there, maybe in January? I know the Izanagi Shrine is closer to where I live at least
This here is the main temple as it were, but entrance is restricted beyond the main gate, though you can watch further in but no cameras are allowed after the gate. There’s not much to see anyways.
I took some pics with Akane on the way back. I actually stood and waited until a travel group passed because I didn’t want their prayers in a different nearby shrine to be spoiled by me taking pics of the little devil.
On the way back everything was closing already and I needed to eat, but also remembering how dark it was at night I also wanted to take pics before the sun went down. So I grab a the last two beef croquettes from a shop and keep walking.
I kinda hoped these two Yuuna shots would be able to have the trees ion the background but alas the angle didn’t allow it.
Satisfied for the moment, I went back to my room to do some of the early day rituals I neglected in my rush to go out. This is when I did today’s reading for example.
I went to a soba place that was still open but juuuuuuust barely. They closed at 8 and last orders were at 7:30 and oh hey it’s already 7.
Having no time to think too hard about the order I picked their Number One set. It was good! Nothing mind blowing, the soba could’ve used a bit more flavor but it did the job.
Then as I’m going back I see how the area looks at night and oh man I just had to bring the girls.
It was a bit of a chore because with this hotel that task involves going back, taking my shoes off, putting them in a locker, going back to my room, taking my shoues out of the locker and going back out.
Completely worth it tho.
Incidentally, a security guard was patrolling and asked me what I was doing. It was normal stuff, told him I was taking pics, showed him the camera and he went “understood” and kept walking.
Not the first time I’ve decided to take photos in the dead of night in weird public places after all.
Ise is so weird because in the day it’s so full but unlike Kyoto it’s so quiet at night.
Tomorrow the forecast says it’s going to rain. I’m going to probably go out for food and extra souvenirs but otherwise take photos inside the room and take it easy. I have two sets of photos I like so when I compile the photobook for this year I’ll have pics for this trip.
Yesterday I mentioned the curiosity of seeing off the road places is part of the little motivation I have to learn to ride a vehicle.
That reminded me of something that happened in 2020.
I had to make a quick trip to Tokyo and I still had memories in my mind of arriving back in Osaka from the Shinkansen at like 1am fresh in my mind. But like many things that schedule changed after the pandemic mainly because the companies realized that service after a certain hour made very small difference. That’s why family restaurants now close at normal hours instead of being open until like 2am.
As a result I was only able to make it to Nagoya (roughly halfway on the path) before I decided to splurge and pay a cab to get me the rest of the way home in about 3 hours… Which, now that I think about it, it’s just a normal road trip in Venezuela.
Anyway, that trip was mostly dull aside from a tire blowing while on the highway and me seeing firsthand what happens when a car has a problem on a highway (there’s a bunch of phones on the road where you can ask for help). The thing is that pandemic life had been so dull that even that small amount of novelty had me outright energized.
But I bring the story up because in one of those streets the cab took they had blue streetlights.
For those that don’t know, there’s a thing where it’s believed that streetlights that are tinted blue (as opposed to the usual yellow or white) reduce aggression. I don’t know if it was a fad that vanished but that’s the only time I’ve seen those blue lights and there’s a part of me that’s like “I wonder what else I’m missing on?”
Oh yeah I also bought some Cool Rocks, but I’ll show those when I’m sorting my luggage.