Small Japanese shops (1/300) - Page 5

**Don Boose** · #41 10-06-2021, 10:57 AM

Excellent little building.

Thanks for today's language lesson.

Would you pronounce 山田刄物店 as Yamada yaibamonoten?

Don

**Viator** · #42 10-06-2021, 11:42 AM

Dear Don, I am sorry but I cannot help you with this matter. I am myself an absolute beginner in Japanese and I have exactly no idea! I saw the logotype on some image on the Internet, retyped the kanji into the Google Translate and then found the brand name on the list of the Japanese business companies. So I have no idea even if it should be pronounced as on-yomi or kun-yomi.

**Don Boose** · #43 10-06-2021, 01:57 PM

Dear Andrew – Whichever way the name may be pronounced, you have produced an excellent model of an Edo-era-style shop.

The kun and on readings certainly complicate things. You may know the story of the Japanese aircraft carriers Hiyō (飛鷹) and Jun’yō (隼鷹), which, because of mis-readings of the Kanji by U.S. Navy language officers, were listed in Allied publications as “Hitaka” and “Hayataka” until the end of the war.

Don

**Viator** · #44 10-08-2021, 06:04 AM

Don,

to be honest I never heard this story, but I am not surprised at all.

---

Well, the next Sakamoto-san's model in Nekomura will be his N38 barracks for temporary housing of people who lost their houses in natural disasters. It goes in two options, with the doors in a front wall and with the additional porches. I chose the first option, however I made all the electrical boxes protruding from the front wall and the same for gas bottles on the side wall to the right.

So far everything is fair, but...

But then I have come to the big electrical cabinets on the side wall and I have seen the cable poles on the background photo and I realised that I can no longer avoid noticing one of the very specific feature of the Japanese cities. You know what I mean: the electrical poles/posts and cables.

The electrical poles are everywhere (except few historical sites where they were deliberately hidden from the sight to avoid spoiling of the Edo-era-style cityscape), they are ubiquitous, they are loaded with multiple cable insulators, with hanging individual transformers and often with bunches of spare cables to make any repairs as quick as possible. Due to the seismic reasons the cables wouldn't be hidden underground, so they were, are and perhaps will be forever the distinctive (maybe the most distinctive) determinant of the Japanese urban atmosphere.

So, I purchased 0.1 mm dia brass wire and now I am waiting for delivery...

**Don Boose** · #45 10-08-2021, 08:12 AM

Real micro work on that structure, Andrew!

Image 6: Papercraft-N (pe-pa-kurafuto N)?

When I was stationed in Japan, there was a good view of Mount Fuji from the stairwell of the building I worked in (and a few times a year, the air was clear enough to see the magnificent white wall of the Japanese Alps from my office window). But there was also a tangle of electrical wires obstructing the view of the mountain. My wife used to tell newcomers, "If you can enjoy the view of Fuji-san without being distracted by the wires, you will enjoy your time here."

Don

**Viator** · #46 10-08-2021, 08:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Boose

Real micro work on that structure, Andrew!

Image 6: Papercraft-N (pe-pa-kurafuto N)?

When I was stationed in Japan, there was a good view of Mount Fuji from the stairwell of the building I worked in (and a few times a year, the airs was clear enough to see the magnificent white wall of the Japanese Alps from my office window). But there was also a tangle of electrical wires obstructing the view of the mountain. My wife used to tell newcomers, "If you can enjoy the view of Fuji-san without being distracted by the wires, you will enjoy your time here."

Don

Dear Don,

Your wife was perfectly right, and more than once I was astonished looking at my own photographs taken somewhere and finding there some industrial or artificial objects, which were invisible for my naked eye! The same for the historical reenactment: you go to the tournament and you enjoy yourself with a fully historically correct environment, huts, clothes, cups and weaponry, and after returning home you download a ton of images from your camera data storage device and discover hundreds of modern bottles, wrist watches, beer cans, mobile phones and plastic bags and you are lucky if you can find just one or two photos really FULLY free from the modern stuff. And when you finally find one and you are showing it to your friends, they immediately point out a car hidden in some bushes, the high voltage line on the horizon or at least few "chemitrails" above the castle!

As for the image No. 6., this is the original Sakamoto-san's image and it is named by him personally. This is exactly the image which inspired me to finally accept the challenge of the "electrification" of my diorama. All the models on Papermau are called "N" plus a project number after the "N gauge", because he often prepares his drawings in 1/150 scale, somewhere between 1/144 (popular scale for aircraft models) and 1/160 which is one of the basic scales for railroad modellers, called in Germany "N".

**Viator** · #47 10-09-2021, 03:23 AM

The first batch of the "concrete" poles are prepared for the transformers.

So far there is no paper used (they are made of toothpicks and match sticks), but all the hangers/cable trays and transformers will be made of paper.

After some research I realized that I will never fully recognize all the components of this complicated electrical grid nor understand their importance so perhaps the result will be far from the faithful copy of the functional original system because I am not sure which components are necessary and more important and which ones are not, so I abandoned the idea of copying everything, especially in this scale, focusing on the most distinctive and visible elements. The "blueprints" (really blue) are made after photographic evidence while the last black&white sketch contains the elements I decided to include into my project. Let's see if it is possible to recreate these devices in paper and wires...

**Don Boose** · #48 10-09-2021, 07:08 AM

A good job of selective simplification to give a realistic impression of the complex reality.

I very much enjoy seeing your drawings. They are pleasing little works of art in and of themselves, and they help understand the completed models.

Don