Alternative title: Get in the choppah.
Today’s reading is an invitation to think “You’ve done plenty with your responsabilities, but what do YOU want to do for yourself?”
The day started with no weird dreams, I just double checked the packing of stuff and waited for the pest control guy to drop by. While at it I also put some stuff into prepaid envelopes to put in a mailbox when I headed out.
When the pest control guy arrived I realized I made a good investment in calling him. He covered the nest in a bug net before spraying it with insecticide and crumpling it by hand (with gloves). The speed and certainty with which he did was awfully reassuring.
With that done, I take the first train, and unlike other trips in the past I decided to book each train individually because if I book them in advance God knows how much running I’m gonna have to do.
First leg of the trip was up to Okayama and it was smooth sailing aside from like… a 5 minute delay in the shinkansen arriving.
The moment you step out into Okayama you’re flashbanged with Momotaro Memorabilia, Memotaro if you will. And turns out it’¿s because the legend originates in Okayama.
I was already thinking I should make a plan to explore Okayama later (it’s about 45 minutes in shinkansen from Osaka) but I got to take the chance to explore the station a bit since the next train was one hour away. I could’ve taken one earlier, but it was full and I didn’t have the Oversized Luggage seat.
However, check this out.
I boarded the Yakumo 13, at 13:13, on seat row 13, on car 4; there’s four 13s and 1 plus 3 is 4. Moreover, if you add up the numbers on the arrival time you get 16, which is 4 times 4.
13 and 4 are both numbers of ill omen in different cultures, but in numerology they’re positive and related by the whole one plus three thing. With that meaning in mind it might be a sign that things are changing into more stability.
Or I might be carrying a fallen feather from the god of misfortune himself, we’ll see.
Regardless, I kept the ticket. You can keep tickets like these, they stamp them, demagnetize them, and basically make them useless as a ticket but you can keep them as a memento.
This path from Okayamka to Yonago was a bit less smooth though. My main complaint was that the dude besides me kept dozing off and his head kept constantly leaning towards me and then he’d make himself comfortable and take the whole arm rest.
Thank God I enabled fast travel, AKA booted up Balatro on my phone.
Yonago was amazing because the moment you head out you already have Kitaro telling you to go to Line 0 for the train.
Yes, Line 0, only line 0 I’ve ever seen. I think there’s some pun with rei and yuurei going on, but it just feels ominous in a fun way.
I headed out of the station before heading in again (this is when I got the ticket stamped as keepsake) and I took the chance to get a couple of souvenirs. Then I see the actual Line 0 area and it’s so cool, but I gotta ask… why give this Neko Musume a big rack? Either give me pre-2018 goblin or post-2018 bishoujo, don’t mix them though.
There’s two themed trains and each only has two cars, the one I took was themed with either Nezumi Otoko or Neko Musume, and the other one (which I saw heading the opposite way) has Sunakake Baba and Konaki Jiji.
The trains are really old refurbished trains. They’re like the ones I took when I went to Meoto Iwa where you gotta press a button for the doors to open. But unlike those ones, the fare here was with IC cards.
You might be wondering: Well, where’s Kitaro in those trains? IN THE ANNOUNCEMENTS. I didn’t catch it here (though I did film the whole path from the window so I caught it there) but some stations also have Medama Oyaji interjecting.
Sidenote, I just updated the About page with a link to my Youtube channel. It’s mainly whatever the hell I feel like filming so don’t expect one specific brand of content, it’s just a repository of videos I wanna have somewhere accessible.
Of course the moment you get off the train there’s a barrage of Kitaro stuff waiting for you, but more importantly for me, the area as a whole is very comfortable accomodation-wise.
There’s conbini, supermarkets, even a clothes shop within eyesight, which is an easy declaration to make considering that the hotel stands out as one of the few buildings in the area.
In short order of ideas I was hungry and tired as hell. So I go to a nearby sushi place and that was some good sushi, they even had friggin crab sushi.
I restocked some stuff in the nearby Lawson and then went to my room because what was supposed to be a 4 hour trip extended to like 7 hours.
And so, as I lay in bed, three thoughts cross my mind.
The first is that damn my feet are itchy as hell from having the socks on for so long.
The second is that I’m gonna buy some tape and cover the standby light from the TV I hate how it’s glaring straight into my face.
And then there’s the third one…
I forgot to send the dang envelopes I was supposed to drop into the mailbox.