Japan : 調布市、ゲゲゲの鬼太郎

En français

I always wondered why there was so many statues of manga characters in 調布, especially in 天神 (tenjin street) and which manga they belonged too. I figured it out few days ago while accidentally watching ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 千年呪い歌(Kitaro and the millenium curse). Kitaro was born in 調布 that is the reason why he is that popular there.
It seems I'm still exploring Japan while being away.
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Europe tour Interail 2006 : Venezia, the water city

En français
The first thing that stroked me when we arrived in Venezia was the water. Of course everybody knows that the city is kind of floated and that they have basically water everywhere and you have seen pictures just like I did. But I wouldn't have imagined that going out of the train station the first thing I was going to see was water. That is one of the images that will stay engraved in my memory.
We walked around visiting the city, they don't have cars, they have boats. That's probably a reason why Venezia is famous for it's gondolas otherwise you take bridges to cross the streets. I think Venezia is a pretty unique city and I can understand now why there are so many tourist visiting it.
Venezia is also famous for the carnival in February or March and even though it wasn't the season for it we could still see a lot of shops selling masks and costumes, making me want to visit the city again during the carnival period.
We walk to Piazza San Marco from where we could see the San Giorgio Maggiore island.Walking in the city we could appreciate the diversity of the Venetian architecture, especially of Gothic style. The Venetian Gothic style has the particularity of using of the Gothic lancet arch with Byzantine and Arab influences which comes from the crossing of culture from Est and West in the 14th century. The city also have buildings of Renaissance and Baroque styles.

Of course we took pictures from Ponte di Rialto like every tourist, even though I like to see what the local people do, I also like to go into the tourist cliché as well.
Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
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ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 千年呪い歌(Kitaro and the millenium curse)

En français

ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 千年呪い歌 (Kitaro and the millenium curse) is a Japanese movie from 2008 following a live-action relieved in 2007 (I hope to see that one soon). The story put in action the main characters of the manga series ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 by 水木 しげる (Mizuki Shigeru) created in 1959.








The main characters are 妖怪 (yokai) or demon spirits. The Yokai and humans have been at war for a long time and Kitaro and his tribe and friends are fighting for the peace. His group is composed of his father, 目玉のおやじ who looks like a walking eye, 猫娘 the cat girl, ねずみ男 the rat man, 砂かけ婆 the sand throwing hag, 子泣き爺, 一反木綿 the roll of cotton who flies the others every where they like, ぬりかべ plaster wall nice to hide behind in case of danger.
In the movie, they are trying to save a human girl from having her soul taken by a evil spirit called nure-onna. They will find out that the curse has to do with the love between a human and the yokai 1000 years ago.

When I started to watch this movie I didn't know what it was about and the first bit was a bit scary but after Kitaro and ねずみ男 appear it becomes a lot of fun. I like the yokai they are funny and ugly.

Voir aussi Japan : 調布市、ゲゲゲの鬼太郎

Casting :

ウエンツ瑛士 as Kitaro
北乃　きい as Kaede
大泉 洋 as Nezumi-otoko
田中麗奈 as Neko Musume
室井滋 as Sunakake babaa
田の中 勇 as the voice of Medama oyaji

Watch it here.

Cinema, Manga, Animation Content

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Pécs, back to Hungary

En français
We then took the train back to Hungary to visit a city called Pécs. This city is the 5th largest city in Hungrary even though the city center is quite small. It is surrounded by fortification. The main square is called Széchenyi Square in the historical center, there we can see the Mosque and the statue of Hunyadi János on horse back. Hunyadi János was the governor of the kingdom of Hungary in the 15th century and voivode of Transylvania. Twelve streets leads to this square. We also walked around the fortification on a pedestrian road.  This city is interesting because you can see the vestige of some medieval constructions.
To get to our next destination we need to first take a train to Gyékényes, at the border with Croatia where the controller decide to make us pay for a reservation or want to have us leave the train at the next stop as we don't have Euros. Hopefully we will find someone to lend us the money.

Europe tour Interail 2006 : Introduction 
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