Hi all,
Shizuoka was a blast, a bit more quiet than last time I went, and for repeat offenders the presence of so many exhibits that I have seen before made the photo session sparser than it would have been had I been a newcomer - so check out my previous Shizuoka pics if you want to see more large-scale ships, for instance.
Overall impression: club exhibits were good, lively cross-talk and interaction (helps that my Japanese is better, too); sadly no organized events like interviews or model-related presentations; flea market was as always a great success, pity about the collector-intended stall section, since I am not a collector. Money-making being the primary concern for the companies, it was clear that the auction was a complete gouging and it failed miserably. Cross-contracts between companies resulted in Tamiya resorting to pure bullying, so Pitroad and Gunze Sangyo were not represented this year, so much for new small-scale ships and ALL the paints (Tamiya paints don't count for much). The Tamicon winners were, um, pretty insubstantial and dwarfed by the club exhibits, so I hope they will be displayed more prominently next time around (it looked as though they were placed in a box for storage, rather than being on display). Weather was rainy and very humid (hehe) Saturday, and wonderfully warm and sunny on Sunday.
Shanghai Dragon brought some of the internet-sales brand over to show off, including die-cast partly pre-assembled kits. Tamiya showed off their news 1/32 A6M2, 1/35 Char 1 bis, and a few variations on 1/700 O and H class DDs, Fletcher DDs and Z-39 class DDs. Hasegawa showed off their new 1/723 Ju88A-4, 1/48 Fw190A-3 with new ailerons, 1/48 (?) JASDF two-seater F-104, P-39, and a few more I will have to check via the photos (why you ask, I shall explain!). Aoshima showed very rough castings of the 1/700 I-400 IJN subs, and only some plans of their intended retooled Ise and Hyuga. Fujimi, I forget if they had anything new (I hasten to add that I don't bother with cars, figures, non-military aircraft, and not with armoured vehicles either mostly). I would REALLY REALLY have liked to see Skywave/Pitroad ( Mr. Tamiya, if you are listening, tell the companies you disagree with to not bring any product lines you don't like, that way we can avoid spilling the cut-throat business atmosphere over into the public part of the hobby show, and take a good look at the history of the Japanese model industry before embarking on a trail of hypocrisy. ).
Now, I did have a link, but I notice that my Apache server is set up to not give access to that subdirectory, so everybody, please wait until 12 hours have passed before trying to access the following site:
formatting link
It should be okay by 00:00 JST on May 23rd.
Cheers, Gernot