Today’s deck is Quen Forget Tarot De Gap.
It’s apparently award-winning? I don’t mean it as a diss, I just didn’t even know there were awards for that. The deck is interesting because each card is associated with a location, and it blends the traditional tarot imagery with that location.
Today’s reading indicates a certain hesitation, a fear of losing control over things but thinking too much about it… I can think about a few things in that front, yeah.
It is Kyoto time.
My dislike of Kyoto is both vocal and well-documented. People always wonder why considering I live in a big city already but the thing is that even if Umeda is a sea of people, it’s a sea of people moving to be in places. Kyoto is crowded and on top of that it’s the sort of crowd where people stand around taking pics and whatnot making navigation tedious.
In fact, this disdain is the very same reason why whenever I’m around Shinsaibashi I avoid Dotonbori and the Glico Man bridge because the mere act of moving through it is Hell.
But friends are in the country so I have my motivation to move around.
I made good time when I left but then I had to make a transfer and got lost. I still don’t know which train I had to take, I assume it was a subway or something.
Anyway, the result was that a 1PM appointment moved to basically 3PM but there were enough places to faff about so it wasn’t really an issue.
I made it to Keiryu Bridge, which is a landmark I always saw the few times I entered Bitsummit but never had much of a chance to check.
When the time came I had lunch, it was a really good place that served egg-based dishes. It was also one of those meetups that’s like… one third business and two thirds catching up.
We parted ways and while my original plan was to check the Kyoto racecourse I figured maybe I could make a quick return home to travel lighter and then go back for the dinner appointment.
I get in the cab, I indicate Shin Osaka, and the driver gives me this look and goes “Shin Osaka?!” I thought “is that too far away?” But I guess he just didn’t know Shin Osaka existed as evidences by how he checked his GPS later.
BY THE WAY, THIS DUDE’S FIRST INSTINCT WAS TO QUESTION THE VERACITY OF MY STATEMENT INSTEAD OF CHECKING ONE OF HIS THREE GPS SCREENS.
So I just tell him to get me to Kyoto Station. It proved serendipitous because… you see, people isn’t the only crowded thing, the traffic was Gell, and what’s usually a 10-15 minute ride at most turned into almost half an hour.
I still don’t really feel like letting go of his weird reaction though. I was lucky he did it because the delay changed my plans and he’s lucky my proficiency isn’t at the point where I can be sassy just yet.
But the station was a good spot to regroup. I went to the bathroom and gave some thought to what to do next, finally deciding to just take a stroll to the spot I was supposed to meet at for dinner.
I wasn’t half bad. I walked to the Kamo riverside and then started walking north until I got there.
I got the chance to take a bunch of cool photos, a bunch of them with the mini lomo until another roll ran out.
The place was a Yakiniku spot we went to two years ago, except this time it was a bigger crowd. I recognized at least half of the people present and met some others.
I ordered a floral shochu they had in the menu mainly because I’m usually curious about those things but lately that sort of thing has been a nice conversation piece. Showing photos of weird booze and talking about it.
This restaurant also sells a different kind of beef so my lexicon of beef this year grows by another one: Shinshu Beef. Apparently the different with this one is that it’s from Nagano and it’s fed mainly apples.
I chatted about that, bringing up things like the Spiderman statues by jobe beef restaurants and without realizing it I just gave everyone an impromptu sho while putting the meat on the grill.
By the end of the evening I was called “interesting” by one of the people I just met which as many of you know I take as the highest praise since I try to experience and learn as much as I can as much for fun as for being a writer.
There was a Hankyu station relatively close so I rode it thinking it would take me close to home… turns out it was the wrong Hankyu. It didn’t leave me THAT far away but it did leave me in the sort of middle ground where taking a transfer for a single station felt like a hassle so I just walked home.
As you might expect I ended up Destroyed. But it was a great day on the whole.