Small Japanese shops (1/300)

[Viator]

Thanks, Erik!
And you are right: the bag filter must be fed by the rotary pump - a cyclone - if it has to collect the dust. Of course I have seen the cyclones on the photographies of the sawmills - on the top of the bag filters batteries or next to them - but I simplified the design, neglecting making of few details, including a cyclone. I swear I will add it later. The sawmill is still in progress: I am preparing the old wooden hall and a planks store under the roof, and maybe an industrial forklift or sideloader, so one day I will return to the Takakatsu factory.

But first I must take photographies of all these generic little shops and bars, and share them; I made nearly fifty of them up to now.

[Viator]

In the meantime: The necessary addition for every Japanese town are miniature garbage trucks. They are difficult to be seen by the tourists because they are night life creatures, but if you watch the YouTube Live Camera at Akihabara or Shinjuku quarters at night you will see whole flocks of them, busy collecting thrash on the deserted streets. In Tokyo and Osaka most popular are ISUZU trucks with the similar driver's cabin and different types of body. Some series are white but most of them go in expressive colors: they're blue, red, yellow or even pink. I have chosen light cobalt blue as a basic color for Nekomura ISUZU garbage trucks and then I added few pink ones ornamented with white sakura flowers, with slightly different aft, which are typical for Osaka community. I have made a fistful of these little utility trucks but still I will need more of them so the manufacturing will be continued.

[Don Boose]

Andrew -

Inspired by your Nekomura project, I have signed up for a class on Japanese architecture at Dickinson College in the Spring 2023 term (after I finish up my current Japanese Literature into Cinema class).

Don

[Viator]

Originally Posted by Don Boose

Andrew -

Inspired by your Nekomura project, I have signed up for a class on Japanese architecture at Dickinson College in the Spring 2023 term (after I finish up my current Japanese Literature into Cinema class).

Don

Wooow! It's a really great idea!
Don, thank you for that feedback. Being 55 I feel sometimes too old and tired myself to continue some projects, the more to start new ones, but your example encourages me to never give up!

[Viator]

Okay, so let's start.

I think this pack of 45 little shops could be counted as a set, not as the separate models due to their number and generic design. On the photo images they are not separated by types, but there is very few types: four roof & wall shapes repeatedly used in various combinations with four plank colors and three plaster colors, and most of them have flat windows and doors (not recessed), so they are slightly simplified in comparison to my other last buildings. On the other hand, all of them have distinctive canopies, signboards, shopwindows, and many more details like windows and doors were individually changed, as well as the roofing materials, so no two are alike. In the first batch I will show corner shops, i.e. shops with the two neighboring walls equipped with shopwindows and canopies.

(#100)
Images:
a b c d e
f g h i j
k l m n o
p q r s t

Few notes:
100a Sushi bar comprising of two standard square segments
100b This building covers three squares
100j Two little shops built as one building and having common entrance
100o Bike rental shop with the yard surrounded by a wooden fence
100p Ice cream shop with a similar, partially covered yard

[Viator]

Let's continue:

(#100)
Images:
u v w x y
(#101)
Images:
a b c d e
f g h i j
k l m n o

Few notes:
100x The owner of this small bar neglected watering his pot plant...
100y WANEKO ("The Japanese Cat") is a name of the Polish editorial office who translates directly from Japanese into Polish and distributed manga comics, so I count this shope as a tribute to my main manga vendor I put their original logotype on the signboard.
101f The cardboard parcels heaped at the door are marked with Yamato Transportation logotype, perhaps the most popular company delivering goods to the individual clients and companies.

[Viator]

And the last five:

(#101)
Images:
p q r s t

101p The fan shop with the folded canopy resembling the fan itself and with a big fan hanged over the entrance. The big red circle is of course the same as the national emblem of Japan, but it was as well a heraldic family crest (kamon) of few samurai families. The fan fixed on the top of a pole was a personal sign of few commanders (o-uma-jirushi) as famous as Uesugi Kenshin and Matsudaira daimyō (future Tokugawa Ieyasu shōgun), marking the command stand during the battle, so it gives rise to many historical associations.
101s I made one more automated laundry but I made no photo. It looks the same as the previously made one (see the image), but with the red roof. It can be seen on the last photo images, showing the whole set.
101t In fact this building is not a "small simple shop with no living quarters" as all remaining in this set, but a real machiya - a traditional building with an apartment over the shop arranged on the ground floor.

I suppose I will made more of such buildings in future, because I need some trillion or so of them on the diorama: all the shops within #100 & #101 sets together occupate less than the area of a A4 size cutting mat as you can see on the last images.

[Don Boose]

It is going to take me a long time to pour over all these buildings and absorb your historical background notes!

Don

[lfuente]

Hey Andrew,

With permission from the Kohnan Electric paperbus designer I've kitbashed some 50s-70s long-nosed and cabover trucks in classic Yamato Transport plus Nippon and Sagawa Express livery. I scaled the PDF to 1:72 but it could be scaled down to 1:300 with markings still legible. Let me know if you could use them.

Originally Posted by Viator

Let's continue:

(#100)
Images:
u v w x y
(#101)
Images:
a b c d e
f g h i j
k l m n o

Few notes:
100x The owner of this small bar neglected watering his pot plant...
100y WANEKO ("The Japanese Cat") is a name of the Polish editorial office who translates directly from Japanese into Polish and distributed manga comics, so I count this shope as a tribute to my main manga vendor I put their original logotype on the signboard.
101f The cardboard parcels heaped at the door are marked with Yamato Transportation logotype, perhaps the most popular company delivering goods to the individual clients and companies.

[Viator]

Originally Posted by lfuente

Hey Andrew,

With permission from the Kohnan Electric paperbus designer I've kitbashed some 50s-70s long-nosed and cabover trucks in classic Yamato Transport plus Nippon and Sagawa Express livery. I scaled the PDF to 1:72 but it could be scaled down to 1:300 with markings still legible. Let me know if you could use them.

Thank you. I haven't yet decided which type of city bus I will choose for Nekomura. However I prefer to use some real bus type and a really Japanese one so your Konan Electric will be OK. Up to now I collected most of the free downloadable models from all sites I found, so I have over 130 Japanese buses models suitable for rescalling to 1/300 (including 2 models from Heiwabus Chiba page, 16 pcs from IRUKA BUS page, 3 pcs of Mitsubishi Fuso, 7 pcs of a Kobe buses (6 pcs from old Sakamoto Sanda-san Papermau page, set N98, plus one more), 4 buses from www.sanco.co.jp, and 93 different buses color versions after Tokyo Transport, JR, Odakyu and other carrier companies, from kohnanerway.gionsyouja.com webpage) plus many models unsuitable to be scaled down due to the overly complicated net. And I prefer to model the modern vehicles (my diorama shows the Japanese town in Heisei 30 - ca 2018 AD).

But I can try scalling down your buses with pleasure.

Note: Most of my cars, buses, excavators and trucks models were downsized nets of a real Japanese vehicles, but I added some foreign ones to make the set more colorful. On the image there are exemplary nets, ready to be glued, of (left to right): ISUZU garbage truck, ISUZU ambulance, Toyota Auris combi, Daihatsu Naked, Suzuki Hustler, plus three foreign cars: Jeep Wrangler, Russian Lada (WAZ) 111 Oka and the most modern car on my diorama, Tesla Cybertruck.