Japan : 江戸東京たてもの園: 東ゾーン

En français
The 東ゾーン of the architecture park was the most interesting part for me (西ゾーン and センターゾーン). It contains a complete street. We first saw a traditional police box, then a city model train, before entering 下町-中　Shitamachi-naka street. The street seems to belong to another time just because it actually does. There is a kitchenware store, the 植村邸 (house of Uemura), a stationary store and Flower shop 花一, a grocery store, an oil paper umbrella wholesale store showing the fabrication process of the paper umbrella (more on this later), an inn, a soy sauce shop and a traditional public bath house 子宝湯 with a bar and a tailor shop. The 子宝湯 was the model for the Miyazika animation 千と千尋の神隠し's bath palace. 
Travel table of content 

NaNoWriMo 2011: Detective story part 1

NaNoWriMo started few days ago and I'm really excited about my new story. It seems incredibly easy to write so far, especially because it's the beginning and I didn't reach yet the part where my lack of planning is going to give me a huge headache. I really like my main character. She is totally unable to focus on the thought at hand and on the task she wants to concentrate one and she is confused by a multitude of contradictory feelings. I made her react in such a way for several reasons. First having a character's thoughts jumping for one topic to another before coming back to the really story is practical to build up the suspense. It also make is easy to hide little details that will have their importance in the rest of the story later. Another aspect of the chaotic mind is that it define the way girls think. For a biological point of view the girl brain is linked from left to right which means that it's really easy for girl to use simultaneously their emotional and logical ability. If my character was only concentrating on fact without taking into account her conflicting emotion I would loose a part of the plot complexity. An other this is the psychological effect of what is happening in her life and how she has to move the other element around. The small flash back are one of the main pattern of deep thinking, "I know this because when I was a kid... " This kind of plot telling has been used extensively in "Slumdog millionaire" when the character has to explain how he figured out the answers to every questions in the game. It makes the story more fascinating as it allow a deeper understanding of the character's past and personality.

Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy reading this first part as much as I enjoyed writing it.
All Novels Drafts 

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And check the word count, it's going really well.

Japan : 江戸東京たてもの園: センターゾーン

En français
Today I will present the center zone of the architectural park 江戸東京たてもの園 details about the west zone can be found here. The center zone is the smallest zone in the sense that it doesn't contain so many building but it contains a garden and Musashino spring-fed pond. The architectural discovery contains :
旧自証院霊屋 (the Mausoleum of lady Jisho-in), Lady Jisho-in was one of the 3rd Tokugawa shogun Iemitsu's concubines, the mausoleum was constructed by her daughter, Princess Chiyo, wife of the Owari Lord, Mitsutomo Tokugawa in 1652. This mausoleum was discovered by Professor 藤岡通夫 (Michio Fujioka) in 1937.
The house of the viscount 高橋 是清 (Korekiyo Takahashi), he was the prime minister during the 二・二六事件 in 1936 and was assassinated during this snow days in the largest bedroom on the second floor. His politics was successful at that time but his measure to decrease the budget of the army had let to making enemies within the rebells military officers.
The 西川家別邸　（second house of the Nishikawa Familly)　was built in 1922 in Akishima. Nishikawa was entrepreneur in silk industry.
The 伊達家の門 (gate of the Date Family Residence).
And the 会水庵 (Tea Arbor "Kaisuian") the tea room was built around the Taisho period as the residence of King Jong Yamagishi tea masters.
Travel table of content

NaNoWriMo 2011

It's November again, which means it's time for writing, writing and even more writing. I know I'm already in possession of two brilliant but unfinished novel and that starting a third one doesn't sound so much like a brilliant idea but seriously what would be November without a NaNo.
Plus I'll finish the other some day, I'm really confident about it.
So what is my NaNoWriMo all about this year ?
A detective story. With brand new characters, no magic and no vampire.
Which means that the famous rule "When you don't know what to write put a vampire" can't really save my word count this year. But I really wanted to try something new, maybe get my character a bit more human and able to solve problems without the rescue of magic tricks. Even investigating magic tricks as seriously as I usually do, they are still magic tricks and this time I'll be investigating evidence and human psychology.
Therefore I spend the last months reading books about human psychology especially to cover up the topic of relationship, self esteem, procrastination, passion and depression as my main character is  a little bit of a whiny in the first place. And I have been watching a lot of Japanese detective story drama, as you have probably noticed in the cinema section lately (more coming soon).
I think I'm well armed not to rely too much on Viorel this year, hopefully cause he is still mad at me for not finishing his story yet.


And as you can see my word count is right on track!