Today is a sunny day but there's a fair bit of wind blowing. I drove up to a local shopping mall and there was some traffic congestion because a tree had been knocked down and it was blocking part of the road. Later on, in the mall as we w…

Last night we had a send off party for a co-worker who is going to move to Nagano prefecture. The usual place where the Yamagata crew go was holding a Halloween party so we ended up at a gyoza restaurant called Mitsuboshi Gyoza. They have …

I won't be posting build progress reports on the 1/700 Arkansas (update: on Oct 22nd I posted a photo of it on Plurk with the name USS Incomplete). It appears to be pirated version of the Tom's Modelworks kit. The copy I have may be a pira…

These days the annual Yonezawa rock music festival goes by the name of the Yonezawa Rock Festival. There was a time when it was named "Doors to Freedom"...I'm not sure when the name change happened. I suspect the name change came about whe…

I took the plunge and put down about $100 on a resin plastic model kit of BB-33 USS Arkansas. I received it this morning and opened up the box to examine the kit parts. When I unwrapped the hull I made an unpleasant discovery; two of the g…

I got a few more of those Yamagata dialect drawings last night. Here are the words I learned of from that batch:"Shemakoi" - cramped (space wise)"Naeda!" - What's up?/What's wrong?"Kosukage" - Have a seat"Shikagu" - to scratch"Shinigiru" -…

Last night a student brought in some copies of drawings made by someone whose last name is "Tsuchiya" (sorry, didn't catch the given name) who had had an exhibition or event at a local museum. The drawings illustrate Yamagata dialect words…

I spotted this bottle a couple of weeks ago whilst having lunch at a local cafe bar. I took note of the distillery name and later searched for it online. I came up empty on that search. The distillery in question has a tendency to release …

I spotted this poster next to the coffee machine at a convenience store in Nanyo. What caught my attention was how much the cat in the pictures resembled my sister's cat, though the tail of the lost cat is very different. Later on I show t…

I'm not quite sure why I purchased a copy of Trumpeter's 1/700 scale model of HMS Calcutta. After putting it together, I'm still wondering why. Things didn't start off well. After gluing the deck pieces to the hull, I noticed that the hull…

I spotted an auction for completed models of two Japanese ocen liners; the Hikawa Maru and the Yawata Maru. I put in a bid on them and that turned out to be the only bid on the models. The reason for bidding on the models is that the Hikaw…

Yet another Fairy Kikaku kit. This one is a "sea truck" which was pressed into service as an IJA transport ship. It met its demise at the hands of USAAF and RAAF on March 3rd, 1943 during the Battle of the Bismark Sea. It was struck by bom…

A few nights ago I was in the process of seating myself in front of my computer when I felt something hard under my right foot. I looked down and spotted something small and grey. Upon inspecting it after picking it up, I realized I had in…

My choice to use one of the two ships in a Seals Models kit of River class frigates as HMCS Ribble was decided by the decal set provided with the kit and my luck in finding a photo of a ship which wore one of the pennant numbers on that de…

Though it's not the worst offender I've come across in the field of ugly aircraft, when I saw the box art of a model kit of a Short Seamew I immediately thought "Dang, that's an ugly airplane!". Coincidentally it turns out that both types …

Again, another Fairy Kikaku split hull ship kit. The subject is a somewhat obscure ferry, the Prins Hendrik. The ship was launched/completed in 1932 and put into service in the Zeeland province of The Netherlands. My understanding is that …

I was walking through the skywalk between Yamagata station and the Kajo Central building when a young woman said "Excuse me...". I stopped and then she pointed out that my shoes were mismatched! ‍ She was an international student who was a…

Whereupon a quick build of a ship model kit was interrupted by a short vacation.... The latest kit to reach completion is yet another Fairy Kikaku split hull wonder. This time it's the Nagano Maru. I think the real Nagano Maru was a victim…

In the long run I think I ended up putting more work into this model than I had intended to. In my previous report I mentioned the photo etched ratlines I had added, the bulwarks I had removed, and the fourteen short little brass rod deck …

This morning I was loudly awakened by an earthquake alert on my iPhone X (which doesn't have a SIM card but is active on my home wi-fi)…but not on my iPhone 13. After groggily getting to my feet I checked my iPhone 13. There was a text ale…

The actual Daido Maru (depicted here by a 1/700 Fairy Kikaku kit) was an OSK Line cargo ship launched in 1935. In 1940 she was taken over by the navy and employed as a gunship with mine laying capabilities. The kit is a rough approximation…

So now I've moved on to the largest member of the Fairy Kikaku 1/700 Dunkirk Set (1) kit. Originally it was meant to represent HMS Grive but I chose to render it as the yacht Narcissus. In real life that was its original name. Here is the …

This time I tackled a recent arrival: Fairy Kikaku's 1/700 Dunkerque (1) set. There are four ships in this set; the motorboat Firefly, MTB 102, a French sub chaser, and HMS Grive (former yacht Narcissus). Of this lot, the latter two were s…

This ship is the second vessel included in the Australia First Convoy Escort Group kit. The real life HMAS Bingera started off as a merchant vessel built in Scotland and was commisioned into the RAN in February 1940. The model is yet anoth…

So, I decided to tackle another Fairy Kikaku kit. I've got so many I might as well make a dent in the stash of them. This time I opened up their "Australia Convoy Escorts (1)" (sic) kit.... Contained in the box are hulls split into three p…

I've just finished a somewhat unsuccessful search for the name of bar/club that once existed in Gastown (in Vancouver). It was the venue where I once saw the punk band Slow in concert. I have a vague recollection of one of the band members…

Here is a quick look at the latest kit I removed from my kit stash and turned into something resembling a model of a ship. I say that because this particular kit was assembled along the lines of the drawing that it was packaged with. There…

So, this was the last stretch as far as assembly work went; the anchors were attached, the plane handling crane was put in place, small davits were attached, the mainmast was rebuilt, miscellaneous small pieces were glued in place, and the…

One thing I started doing with this kit build is to attach small parts to strips of masking tape mounted to something (in this photo a paint jar) when I paint them. Given how much trouble I've had when handling this kit's parts, I figured …

I will eventually finish this kit...just not now.... Anyways, after my previous mystery part episode I took a second look at an odd looking piece of scrap plastic in the parts box. I held it up to the ship and sure enough I found I had ano…