Shirakawa-went

Imagine this scene; present-day, and our intrepid protagonist has a tense stand-off at the foot of the Great Pyramid. His goons show up toting guns and the protagonist is forced to flee into the trackless desert, hoping to find refuge there.

Yeah, that's kind of what I am doing with Shirakawa-go. Yes, there is a historic village of several listed houses in the old style, and it is on the edge of a national park and a holy mountain rises above it.

Sort of. It is also in the middle of a larger village. Shirakawa is a village, but has a population of 1,600 and forty-plus inns and guest houses and a large tourist population especially during the winter months.

And I've got my tense stand-off happening on the Deai Bridge:

But it doesn't go from the village to the national park. It connects the historic village to a parking lot...in the bigger (and more modern) village. Plus, if you are heading for the three peaks of Mt. Haku (which all have names and different things going on with them), the first thing you meet is the E41; the Tōkai-Hokuriku Expressway.

Besides mucking up the geography, I've also got a bit of a squirm because in this section, the gods/nature spirits/wandering monks/pure chance and circumstance favor the white girl over the superstitious locals. Who are imported chimpira from Kyoto, but anyhow.

(And I've been playing Yakuza 0 lately. They've changed the names, but that's Kabuki-cho, and even the Golden Gai -- the main reason why I wanted to explore that game world. Even bought a woolen belly-band at the local Don Quijote konbini, and played games at a Sega Arcade. But what I didn't expect is the game is set in the 1980s, and the real estate boom is a core part of the plot!)

Well, I can't worry about it. The plot is set, and I have enough problems to wrangle already. I've been plugging my way back through the third act turn-around for two weeks now. Somehow between health and increased work hours and distractions I'm getting almost no writing done...

And the Dotonbori! Yakuza 0 has scenes in the Dotonbori as well! Of course they don't call it that, but I'd recognize that crab anywhere...

And I got through revisions of the critical third-act turn-around. It was the model for the last two stories, too; this is the place where Penny goes from being naive and trying to learn about a new place to being dangerously competent. This is where she starts to put it all together. Starting with a "Dai Hado" in an abandoned village against the chimpira that went after her.

I'm still not going to make the end of September. But it will be close. If only I could take more time from work!