Small Japanese shops (1/300)

[Viator]

Two little bars with specific roofs.

While cutting and gluing hundreds of walls I thought of the uncommon building with a nearly rectangular (in fact it makes a parallelogram) and flat roof, secting every walls angular. The resulting of this idea is a small sushi bar (#90).

As a second step I developed a slightly bigger triangular building with a flat triangular roof. Both shapes of the buildings have recessed entrance areas and look pretty modernistic, however in the second one (a triangular) construction/finishing materials referring to traditional construction were used, thus perfectly fitting the Japanese town suburb centerplace (#91).

If someone want to try the same, here you are the nets to be printed on 90-100 gpm A4 sheet (the roofs, canopies, signboard and hvac units shall be additionally glued a second layer).
And if you find this design too sophisticated, you can glue a traditional two-storey bar.

[Erik Zwaan]

Fantastic creations. The lobster itself is already a beauty!

Erik

[Viator]

Thanks s lot!
It is a free model of a Red Bee Shrimp, sized down few times.

[Viator]

The old bar, slightly modernized without losing the character of an old machiya.

(#92)

[Don Boose]

This project just gets better and better. The giant crustaceans are wonderful, and I like your recent pufferfish emporium.

Don

[Viator]

Originally Posted by Don Boose

I am ready to take a walk through those streets and to admire the buildings.

Don

I wish I could take a walk with you when the town is ready!

---

This little shop's best years are long gone.

(#93)

[Viator]

The daily press printing house

I thought of a newspaper editorial office and printing house and, surfing through the images in the www, I found few interesting facades. One of the most original was the pretty big printing house of Sankōdō Corporation in Fujisawa-shi, at Old Tōkaidō street. I was impressed by the interesting mix of the traditional shape of the facade plus a tiled front canopy and the modern materials and remaining walls design, so I decided to choose this one.

I copied the office facade from this photo image (much later I found more images of the building at Google Maps Street View) and I designed a (slightly smaller than the original) printing house workshop hall on the rear of the office building for my Nekomura diorama. This time I didn't use computer printing but the scratch building out of few colored thick paper sheets with cutouts made with a modeller's knife and the doors & windows drawn by hand with a 0.1 mm black marker and glued from the inside which is my favorite way. Only the electrical box was cut out of the pre-printed drawing. The proportions were established by eye, as usual, so the building is not identical to the original (which was inevitable but the model was not thought as a replica of the original shop); it is slightly more narrow and I neglected the overhanging left side. I didn't make the complex set of loading ramps, canopies and a shed on the rear of the hall; I could add them later if the location on the diorama will allow it.

Later on I found the building address and postal code on the Sankōdō webpage and I looked at the Google Maps (for top view) to find out the roofs shape and they proved to be flat or nearly flat so I made them flat (except the front gabled part). The original roof was covered with the light colored trapezoidal sheets or sandwich panels but I decided to make an experiment and to use a fine sandpaper which could imitate in this scale the gravel covered flat roof very well (although it terribly spoils the scissors or knife when being cut). I am pleased with the result and I hope you will be pleased too.

(#94)

[Don Boose]

Another excellent addition.

Don

[Viator]

The (pretty old) paper mill

The paper mill delivering the reams and rolls of paper to the printing house(s) has not been renovated for a long time and its rusty roofing and cladding requires urgent replacement with a new one, otherwise the printers will be forced to find another vendor.

For the moment it is the second Japanese building I made for Nekomura which is equipped with a chimney (stack). The stack itself was made of paper drinking straw, painted and weathered with a brush. Only the bended piping entering the bag filter box (a cellulose dust silo) was made of plastic.

(#95)

[Siwi]

That last one has a lot of character.


Maybe this has been asked before, but do you have a 'map' for this town where you plan all the buildings will go? Or do you just build what comes to mind each time?