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.
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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!

Japan : 江戸東京たてもの園: 西ゾーン

En français
This Sunday, I went to visit  江戸東京たてもの園 with my friends. The architectural park is divided in 3 zones, west, central and east zone. Today I will present the West zone. It contains, in the order of our visit, 田園調布の家大川邸(The house of Okawa in Den'enchofu), the house of 前川 國男 (Kunio Mayekawa) who was a Japanese architect, 小出邸 (the house of Koide) , 綱島家住宅（農家） (the farmhouse of Tsunashima family),奄美の高倉 (an elevated granary from amami-oshima Island), 吉野家（農家）(the farmhouse of Yoshino family),  八王子千人同心 (the house of the Leader of the Hachioji Guards), 三井八郎衛門邸 (the residence of Hachirouemon Mitsui) and the 常盤台写真場 (Tokiwadai Photo Studio).
Travel table of content

So annoyed by busy people (part 2)

Here we go again. I'm so so so so annoyed with "busy" people, still, after all this time and after the first-epic-tell-the-truth post about how people are so busy indeed.
Maybe I should actually start to classified "busy" people into categories, because today I'm going to describe the childish one. And I know that some people will recognize themselves (well at least their behavior) and totally hate me for that.  Well I don't really care about those I'm caring about the one who are going to go "oh it really sucks when I do that actually.... let's try to fix it."



So here is the thing. I'm going to show you 2 dialogs. The first one is going to put into action the very irritating "busy" person and the second one is going to put into action the very cool busy person.

Dialog 1 : 
Person 1 : "Hey, this really cool movie went out last night" *hand the flier*
Person 2 : *Takes the flier* hum...
Person 1 : I saw the trailer few weeks ago, it seemed very interesting, I really want to go see it tonight. Can you go with me?
Person 2 : No, I'm busy.
Person 1 : Oh, it's Saturday night, what are you doing ?
Person 2 : I said I was busy.
Person 1 : So do you want to come to see it with me maybe later.
Person 2 : I don't know 'cause I'm busy.

So now here is the state of mind of poor person 1 (I even feel sorry for having to put her through this) What does she wants ? Is she interesting in the movie ? Do I need to wait for her to come with me another day when she is not that busy ? Will she get mad at me if I go without her ? Can I go with another friend ? Does she actually want to see it but not now ?
And of course she cannot ask those questions because that will just make the "busy" person mad.
Person 2 : Of course I'm mad for her asking so many questions, she never understands that I'm busy!
Well let me tell you person 2, you are not busy, you are a kid. But more on that later after dialog 2.

Dialog 2 (she is not interested version):

Person 1 : "Hey, this really cool movie went out last night" *hand the flier*
Person 3 : *Takes the flier* hum...
Person 1 : I saw the trailer few weeks ago, it seemed very interesting, I really want to go see it tonight. Can you go with me?
Person 3 : No, I really hate horror movies, they give me nightmares.
Person 1 : Alright, then I'll go with someone else.
Person 3 : Sure, I hope you'll have fun.

So what is the state of mind of person 1, well she knows that she needs to find someone else to go with her, she might be disappointed because she wanted to go with this friend but she can't possibly force her friend to have nightmare.

Dialog 2 (she is interested version):

Person 1 : "Hey, this really cool movie went out last night" *hand the flier*
Person 4 : *Takes the flier* hum...
Person 1 : I saw the trailer few weeks ago, it seemed very interesting, I really want to go see it tonight. Can you go with me?
Person 4 : No, I'm busy.
Person 1 : Oh, it's Saturday night, what are you doing ?
Person 4 : I'm having diner with my boyfriend, but I'm free on Tuesday, if you can wait that long I'll go with you, I saw the trailer too, it seems awesome.

So now what is the state of mind of person 1, well they can both take there agendas and write down the plan. And that makes the all difference, the topic is closed and they don't have to think about it again until Tuesday except to look forward to it of course.

The difference between Person 2 and Person 3 and 4, is that while Person 2 is acting like a child, they are acting like adults.
What I mean is, when a child is busy with something, he can't see forward in the future, he is busy now and it seems that he is going to be busy forever, so he cannot make plans and if he is not interested, he cannot say that because he always wonder what the other person is going to think of him for stating a contradictory opinion. Also a child doesn't know if few days later he will still want to see the movie, maybe his friends with go out to play basketball, or there will be a better movie, or he will want an ice-cream. That's way too many choices for his little brain to compute.
An adult has absolutely not problem to know when he will be free, he can make plans and stick with them because he knows that it's very unlikely not to be able to turn around the other opportunities which could show up at the same time. In the same way he doesn't have problem to tell what he likes or not, because he knows that his personal opinion is as valid as his friend's.

Hiding behind "being busy" when you can't actually say what you truly mean is a childish attitude and cowardliness and it doesn't help in any kind of relationship. Nobody will get mad at you for having something else to do, but they might get mad at you and stop hanging out with you when you put them in the crappy state of mind person 1 was after the first dialog.
See I'm not always annoyed with busy people, I'm busy too, just with the poor excuses I guess.

ボス (boss)

En français

ボス is a Japanese drama in 11 episodes from 2009.
Detective Osawa Eriko is coming back to Japan to become the Boss of a very particular team of detectives. The team has been created to solve special cases in the front but it's more a mediate strike to hide the incompetence of the police than for anything else. Therefor every corner of the police investigation has send their worse elements. Osawa Eriko has to deal with a lazy scientist, a really childish detective, an clumsy old man, a violent guy pursued for gay harassment and an introvert who has been moved from department to department. She however manages to make them solve the case.

Casting :

天海祐希 as Osawa Eriko
竹野内豊  as Nodate Shinjiro
玉山鉄二 as Katagiri Takuma
戸田恵梨香 as Kimoto Mami
溝端淳平  as Hanagata Ippei
吉瀬美智子 as Narahashi Reiko
ケンドーコバヤシ as Iwai Zenji
温水洋一 as Yamamura Keisuke
塩見三省 as Onoda Tadashi

 

I think this drama is a lot of fun. I love every characters in the story, they are too funny. Osawa Eriko is absolutely awesome. 事件だから！！！
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