I recently blogged Japanese builder Turbo’s goldfish-catching scene over on Pan-Pacific Bricks (you may also have seen the post on VignetteBricks).
Since Turbo’s latest creation shouldn’t need any cultural explanation for those of us who’ve been swindled by “shooting gallery” games at carnivals, I’m posting it here on TBB instead. Here’s Turbo’s shooting-gallery scene:
As I blogged earlier this week, July 7th is Tanabata. Turbo and Inago100 join the summer festivities with two great scenes.
Here’s Inago100’s Tanabata vignette (the text says “July 7th is Tanabata”):
Another favorite summertime activity, generally at festivals, is trying to scoop up goldfish using only a paper “net.” Typical of carnival games everywhere, it’s rather difficult. You have to be quick but gentle, because the paper will get soggy and rip — especially if the goldfish is especially frisky and flops around after you catch it.
Turbo captures this scene perfectly with a goldfish-catching scene:
It’s almost time for Tanabata in Japan. Tanabata (which literally means “Seven Evenings”) celebrates the meeting of two celestial lovers, Vega and Altair. In the old Japanese calendar, these two stars were separated by an impassible river, the Milky Way, for all but the days of this festival. To celebrate, Japanese people write wishes on narrow strips of brightly colored paper and tie them to bamboo.
Mumu’s wife celebrates Tanabata with bamboo full of hopes and dreams:
(I’m grateful to mumu and his wife for the recent batch of great creations I’ve been able to feature here on PPB. Keep up the good work!)
Brickshelfer ballchoi presents a nice three-tiered castle reminiscent of a much larger one in Himeji:
It’s brutally, miserably hot (well, mainly humid) in Japan right now. My most recent post featured cold tofu from mumu and his wife. Today’s post features another cold cuisine from mumu, “somen“:
There are several types of noodles in Japanese cuisine, including thick wheat noodles called udon, thinner buckwheat noodles called soba, and very thin wheat noodles called somen. Somen is usually served cold, often on a bed of ice, with various garnishes and a cold sauce for dipping.
Some restaruants, like the one mumu shows in his LEGO scene, make somen a bit more of an experience. You sit at a bar with little channels running in it, and you scoop out the noodles as they float by. They tend to be a bit touristy, but they’re really fun — kind of like revolving sushi, except with channels of water instead of a conveyer belt.
I took my grandfather, visiting from Freeport, Maine, to downtown Tokyo when I was nine or ten, and twenty years later he still tells the “hilarious” story about going to a restaraunt with me and being served cold noodles. “On ice!” he exclaims, “with dipping sauce! I’d never seen the like!” He nearly fell over when we went to a nagashi somen restaurant (nagashi means “flowing”).
After seeing the beautiful Boeing B-29 bomber Josh posted, I could hardly neglect JUNLEGO’s swooshably cool Mitsubishi A6M2 “Zero” fighter:
(The Zero was the primary Japanese fighter in the attack on Pearl Harbor, after which the code phrase “Tora, Tora, Tora” was transmitted back to Tokyo to indicate that total surprise had been achieved.)
JUNLEGO has also posted a floatplane version of his Zero. Incidentally, he’s been working on a battleship Yamato that may rival Malle Hawking’s Harry S. Truman when it’s done!
That’s the sound a rooster makes in Japanese. Here’s MisaQa with another batch of her great brick-built birds:
In addition to chilled soba (buckwheat) noodles with dipping sauce, one of my favorite summer-time dishes is cold silken tofu garnished with green onions and ginger, drizzled with soy sauce. Called hiyayakko, it’s quick, simple, and mighty tasty!!! Mumu and his wife have each created their LEGO versions of this delicious dish. In the Mumu household, they put bonito flakes and Japanese mustard on the tofu instead of grated ginger.
Here’s Mumu’s version (I love the drizzled soy sauce):
And here’s Mumu’s wife’s tofu (the yellow must be the mustard):
The family that builds (and eats cold tofu) together stays together!
A traditional method of fishing practiced for hundreds of years in Japan, called ukai, involves flames and cormorants. Sounds way more fun than a fishing pole or net, right?! The fishermen place a large basket full of fire out over the water, and as fish come near the surface, the fishermen release Japanese cormorants on leashes. The cormorants catch the fish and return them to the fishermen. There’s a great photo essay on PhotoTravels.com about this now-rare fishing method:
Japanese blogger Sumi_handy’s has captured ukai in a cool little scene:
Japanese builder Toshiya has posted another adorable cartoon character, this time from the TV show Kirarin Revolution.
Here’s Na-san, the cat:
Ahhh… Adorable! Who can resist sparkly eyes?
Behold the show’s theme song in all its YouTube glory (and tremble in fear!):
My series of Japanese historical and legendary characters stalled when I couldn’t figure out how to make the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu’s hat (image from Wikipedia; click to read Ieyasu’s biography):
Nelson Yrizarry has solved this problem with a unique combination of pieces, and I also like Nelson’s solution for a folded fan:
Last November, I blogged about the LEGO King Championship event broadcast on TV in Japan. Now, via the aptly named TV in Japan we have actual footage of the show: