Small Japanese shops (1/300)

[Viator]

The pet shop update.

The pet shop & clinic looked way too much serious, so I added some decorations. Shiba heads on the walls and windows was supplemented with the cats: famous maneki neko waving his paw on the signboard and a stylized monmon cat doll painted on the wall over the air conditioning unit, both cats being the symbols of a good luck. Now it looks far more kawaii!

[Viator]

A konbini.

The next building, more traditional in form, houses a small convenience store for the dwellers of my "little Edo" old town as well as for the visitors.

[Viator]

The camera store.

This building is a historical monument too however it is not as old as the "Little Edo" stuff. It follows the popular style of the Taishō and early Showa periods architecture, merging the Western and Japanese styles. The front part was based on some American shop, but made of the bluish glazed brickwork resembling the traditional Japanese or Chinese masonry, while the rear was built as the traditional Japanese wooden structure with a tiled roof.

The original model represents the building in, say, 1950s, but I made some "updates" to make it suitable for Nekomura: a mural with brands of few modern digital cameras companies and an air-conditioning unit on the flat roof.

By the way, few errors were fixed. I added a downspout (and this is a sole non-paper item in the model) because it was missing on the original design. One more layer was glued on the top of the flat roof in order to hide the parapet gluing tabs and the parapet itself was made thicker. A small window approx. 1 by 2 mm on the wooden part ground floor was cut and glued from the inside, same as all the remaining windows. The gluing tabs on the first floor windows canopies and on the vertical signboard were wrongly designed so after few unsuccessful attempts I replaced them with a correct versions.

Finally, I replaced the original (rather illegible) signboard with "Morita Takumi-no kamera-ten" - "Takumi Morita's camera store".

I found this little building extremely cute and the combination of it's two parts - raw wood and glazed bricks - amazing.

[Don Boose]

I like all the shops, especially the "Pesto" store.

Did you ever see the film Rentaneko (Rent-a-cat)? I recommend it. Rent-a-Cat (2012) - IMDb

Don

[Viator]

Thanks a lot! I have never seen this movie. Added to my must-see schedule!

[Don Boose]

Yes. I think you will enjoy it. By the way, autocorrect seems to have converted "Petto" (ペット) into an Italian condiment (pesto).

Speaking of Japanese films and TV series, are you familiar with Midnight Diner ([深夜食堂], Shinya shokudō)? If not, you absolutely must watch it. The Shinya shokudō would not be out of place in Nekomura. Midnight Diner (2014) - IMDb

Don

[Viator]

Originally Posted by Don Boose

Yes. I think you will enjoy it. By the way, autocorrect seems to have converted "Petto" (ペット) into an Italian condiment (pesto).

Speaking of Japanese films and TV series, are you familiar with Midnight Diner ([深夜食堂], Shinya shokudō)? If not, you absolutely must watch it. The Shinya shokudō would not be out of place in Nekomura. Midnight Diner (2014) - IMDb

Don

Thank you very, very much again!
I will watch with curiosity.

[Viator]

Today I will continue the series of Takekawa Jun's buildings purchased from the PaperStructure.jimdofree.com webpage. I purchased pdf-files for over 60 buildings, prepared in "N" or "Z" gauge, and as usual I am going to scale them down to 1/300 and to add some my own ideas (as I love to customize all models and no one of my little shops and houses was made just "as is").

For example, this little corner shop, mid-Showa period, originally was designed by Takekawa-san as a model shop and decorated with Tamiya banner, but I have just made one, so I replaced original brand with Makita logotypes and with drills and grinders commercials, thus creating the hardware/tools shop instead. Besides, I swapped two walls and I added the roof hatch plus an air conditioner, as well as a piece of fence, connecting the tool shop with the previously built photo shop (my first Takekawa-san's model).

I found his models really great, I feel the peaceful little town mood while looking at them when ready!

[Don Boose]

Once again, your little shops have inspired me to head to the Issei Noodle shop to eat a bowl of ramen and to read the just-delivered current issue of the Mekong Review. (Home - Mekong Review - not Japanese, but in the same hemisphere, and I once spent a year living on the banks of the Mekong).

Don

[Viator]

Wow! And you as usual surprises me with your stories. You really traveled a lot of the Asia!

And you, for your part, inspired me to build a rāmen bar next!