Today’s deck is the unofficial Persona 3 and 4 deck.
You know, seeing these designs again makes me realize just how good they are, especially compared to the Persona 5 ones. Now, I’m a known Persona 5 Hater, but I’m also a known Persona 3 and 4 ex-fan so they’re both on even ground on that front for me.
But like, here’s what I mean. Let’s use The High Priestess as an example.
In Persona 3 and 4, the card has so much care. You see the female sillhouette, the letters from the two pillars forming both hat and part of the face… meanwhile in Persona 5 it’s just… some woman looking at a porn magazine. It foregoes all attempts to convey the deeper meaning and proper symbolism in a carefully thought out way in favor of coating the most superficial layer of it with the edgy “criminal” aesthetic.
…I just described Persona 5 there, huh…
Today’s reading basically says “Continuing your creative endeavors might require painful pushing of authority”. It proved prophetic for a small thing today, but just in general it’s something I probably gotta remind myself of.
Another day waking up at 1PM, another day of pushing myself out of bed. As much as I try to remind myself that “my vacation, my schedule”, when things close so early and there’s less than nothing to do afterwards, some self-discipline is required.
On the way to the shopping district, I saw a moss-covered stair that I hadn’t noticed before. I wasn’t quite in the mood to deal with slippery stairs though, partcularly when the thing on the other side might be private property.
The day was overcast as expected and already a tad wet, but I managed to make it to the shopping street in good time.
I took a stroll around the area without much aim and I eventually found the same Cool Rocks shop where I bought an onyx magatama last year. This time I got, among other things: flint, pyrite, and a quartz orb.
I kept walking and I stopped by a shop I actually stopped by yesterday. The owner, seeing the same gaijin drop by his shop twice asked me where I was from and apparently he has imported Venezuelan stones? I legit did not know that.
In that one I got a skull of what looks to be Tiger’s Eye, an Onyx ball, a quartz ball, Australian opal, and other smaller bits.
Finally, another one in the main street netted me a pyrite ball, a fluorite ball, a selenite ball, and a star garnet ball.
The only thing that makes my brain tick harder than cool rocks is cool orbs.
I also got a Megalodon tooth but can’t remember in which one.
I’ll show the loot when I get back.
By this point I required food, so I went to a restaurant that I remmebered from last year and made it riiiiiiiiiight before their last order.
It’s as good as I remember. I also remembered that they give you a discount coupon on your receipt so you can use it on the restaurant’s annex souvenir shop which is hilarious.
The dish showed up as “2023’s Number one dish” on the menu. The waitress also asked me if this was my first time going there.
There’s no chance in hell she remembers me from one year ago…
…right?
Rain started which required me to get an umbrella, since, as you’ll remember, I forgot mine at the station when I left.
You might’ve caught glimpses of her before, but Ise has this mascot character called Aoshima Megu. She’s meant to represent Mie prefecture’s old tradition of pearl cultivation which traditionally involved women holding their breath and diving.
I actually remember AGES ago when she was originally annouinced and there was some hubbub about her making light of the tradition or somesuch, but like it often happens, there’s no better way to educate about something than by making an idea into a cute girl.
Anyway, I was curious because some shop had what looked like “Ashima Megu SSR Ver.” which turned out to be a version made in collab with a racing team.
I bought some stickers and what I thought was a clear file of her to sort some loose papers that accumulated on the trip but NO! Turns out it’s a different character called Igarashi Mai, I assume from the ninja theme park in the area.
Yeah, there’s a whole ninja theme park, you know where it is because there’s a massive fake castle on the mountainside.
If anime girls aren’t your thing, Mie prefecture actually has Oshawott as its official Pokemon mascot, because shells.
By the way, Iwate has Geodude because Iwate can mean Stone Hands. You’ve probably seen the pics of the Geodude with Photoshop Transparent Layer Legs.
So after everything I went back to the hotel and dropped my stuff. I lounged for a while but realized I had to go get food for later since the hotel has no restaurant.
Problem was that the rain was picking up big time, but I should be fine, right?
I was not.
I need you to understand that the only reason I wasn’t more wet was because somehow my jacket got the brunt of it. I packed up on snacks and then extra because fuck it I’m already wet might as well make the best of it and returned.
It was the sort of rain where the downpour is so strong that by the time I arrived my umbrella was the least wet thing the same way something is wet in a drizzle vs wet via bucket of water.
You know, this is also the second time in a trip where my shoes get soaking wet, I should probably consider packing spare shoes just in case next time.
Thankfully they had shoe dryers on the entrance. I thought they didn’t do much but I’ll be damned, by the two hour cycle it DID mostly dry them.
Oh yeah so the May trip I mentioned a couple of days ago…
I can’t remember if I already talked about it but “Ise” is too short of a query for the search function of the blog to be specific. So for future reference and for searching this is the Ise Hotel story.
So as you can tell from this blog I’m someone that’s prone to getting stressed and the biggest thing I’ve had to learn in my adult life is how to manage that stress and not go crazy.
The main way I do this is by going out and preferably taking pictures. Aside from the fun of it, it lets me burn energy and make me too exhausted to bother too hard and that’s when clarity comes in.
In March and April I was at the end of my rope. Sakura season was cut a bit short because strong winds blew the flowers away too early, and work stuff kept me away from being able to go out and explore like I normally would.
I need you to understand, I was constantly on the brink of a breakdown. If you thought me going through my Visa stuff was bad, this was worse.
So with only like a week of space in between plans I wanted to go to Ise since I remembered it fondly from going for my birthday last year. The hotel I wanted to go to was booked full (or so I thought, turns out it was only available in Hotels dot com). I went instead to this one hotel that was in the middle of nowhere, you needed a cab to do anything.
So let me paint you the picture.
I travel because I was at the end of my rope with stress. The first day became a cacophony of requests, do I need a cab, do I need X do I need Y. I get hungry and oh no I’m in the middle of nowhere there’s no restaurants or conbini nearby and the hotel restaurant was all reserved. I managed to survive because there was a vending machine with instant ramen.
That night I sleep like hell because there was a storm and if there’s one thing my adult ass is still terrified by is the whistle of really strong wind. I can be in the middle of a hurricane and not mind, but hearing the whistle of it from inside gets me.
So the next day comes, they call me if I want breakfast but I only want to sleep. Then they call me again asking if I want room cleanup and I say no. Then they call me AGAIN for a different reason that I completely forgot by now.
So I finally sleep a little bit, I go shower, and DESPITE TELLING THE STAFF I DIDN’T NEED CLEANUP THE CLEANING STAFF STIL TRIED TO OPEN MY DOOR AND IF NOT FOR THE BOLT THEY WOULD’¿VE SEEN MY NAKED ASS OUT OF THE SHOWER.
I take a cab that I reserved yesterday and go visit a small island. It was fun except for the part where there were no shops and I didn’t have small change so I almost got legitimately stuck for not having 300 yen.
I stock up on instant ramen before returning and that night I couldn’t sleep. Why would I? I woke up super late and now I was worried they might call me for breakfast and stuff.
I was legitimately about to cry in that moment and then I just… snapped.
I decided it was my vacation and the consequences are on me.
I did random stuff on the room until I got tired, I can’t remember if I unplugged the phone but I was so oput I didn’t notice the calls.
Then the next day I looked up and there was a beach near the hotel. A small private beach so no tents allowed or anything but still a cool beach.
And wouldn’t you know it? There was a restaurant there. And that was the fucking day of that cursed trip. It was so good in fact, that it made me realize how much I relaxed with a proper vacation once a month. Basically, even if I don’t have the time to go out through the month, having that guarantee of one day where I’ll be out was really reassuring.
SOMEHOW that cursed trip made me feel like it was worth to try again.
No sketch today sadly. Part of it is that it’s already 4AM as of me writing this and I’m not sleepy so I might do something really silly and stay awake until I gotta leave.
Next post will have the aftermath of that.