New Japanese Models Distraction

This week was like Christmas here, as a shipment of Japanese wooden model kits arrived from Zootoyz, my recommended Japanese online hobby dealer. Four model kits came, and none of them are ship model kits. I decided I needed some nice gift ideas, so I found a number of Woody Joe kits that I can build and present as gifts to my Japanese music teacher, and my family and friends.

I have a lot of ship modeling projects to work on, so I don’t expect to spend a lot of time working on these right away. But, half of these are very simple mini-architectural kits that Woody Joe lists as taking about 8 hours to complete. Perfect for a small weekend distraction!

Teahouse Mini-Architecture Kit

The kits are:

• Mini-architectural kit no. 3 – Sato’s Teahouse
• Mini-architectural kit no. 4 – Japanese-style Inn 
• Shinmei-zukuri Shrine
• Hōryū-ji Temple’s 5-story Pagoda

Japanese-style Inn Mini-Architecture Kit

The Shinmei-zukuri Shrine kit is the newest of the Woody Joe kits here. It came out sometime last year, as I recall. It’s slightly more complicated than the Mini-Architecture kits and is listed as being a 10-hour project. The model represents a very old style of Japanese architecture, an example of which can apparently be found at the Ise Grand Shrine. The kit is a 1/150-scale kit and includes the temple grounds and a Torii gate at the front.

Shinmei-zukuri Shrine

The Hōryū-ji Temple’s 5-Story Pagoda is the real challenging of the projects and it is the largest. This is a model of one of the most famous 5-story pagoda’s in Japan – part of a Buddhist temple comples in Nara Prefecture. It is one of the oldest wooden buildings in the world, with a central pillar that is made from a tree that analysis has shown was felled in 594. Completed, this 40-hour, 1/75-scale project stands about 18″ tall. For a ship modeler, 40 hours is nothing. It looks like it’s going to be a fun and interesting project.

Hōryū-ji 5-Story Pagoda

I’ll probably post progress reports here as I go. Stay tuned.