Tag Archives: Japan

From samurai and ninjas to giant mecha like Gundam or the beautiful films of Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese history and culture inspire LEGO builders all over the world. With contributors fluent in Japanese, The Brothers Brick also brings you coverage of the people and events in the large LEGO fan community in Japan itself.

The Hundred-Question LEGO Poll

Yes, that’s right, one hundred — count ’em, they’re numbered! — questions. This poll or questionnaire has been making the rounds of Japanese LEGO blogs and home pages recently, and there’s really only one question that’s uniquely applicable to Japanese LEGO fans (#35), so I thought I’d take a crack at an English version.

1) Why did you get hooked on LEGO?

2) What was the first set you bought?

3) When did you first start playing with LEGO?

4) What’s your favorite minifig face?

5) What’s your favorite set?

6) What’s your ultimate goal?

7) What theme do you primarily build in?

8) What about new lines that might be released in the future?

9) What are the moments that make you happy you’re a LEGO fan?

10) What do you think of Bionicle?

11) Was LEGO in the past better than LEGO today?

12) What challenges or problems have you encountered while playing with LEGO?

13) Do you have anything you want to tell The LEGO Company right now?

14) How much do you spend on LEGO in a year?

15) What are your interests other than LEGO?

16) What do you think of flesh-colored LEGO heads?

17) Have you ever used LEGO in an unusual way?

18) What set would you like to see re-released?

19) What if you could work for The LEGO Company?

20) Have you ever attended a LEGO event?

21) What parts are you using a lot lately?

22) What parts do you find difficult to use?

23) How would you increase the number of LEGO fans?

24) What kind of new bricks would you like to see released?

25) Do you have any LEGO games?

26) Have you ever been hospitalized due to LEGO?

27) Have you ever felt any animosity toward The LEGO Company?

28) Who do you respect in the LEGO community?

29) What genre of building are you not good at?

30) Which of your creations did you spend the most time building?

31) How much have you spent on LEGO so far?

32) Have ever made a custom minifig?

33) What do you think of customization?

34) How big is the largest creation you’ve ever built?

35) What thoughts do you have about the LEGO King Champion TV show? [It was a LEGO-themed episode of a Japanese game show. Read about it here.]

36) Have you ever gone out looking for old LEGO sets?

37) What do you think of LEGO clubs or user groups (LUGs)?

38) What part do you have the most of?

39) Do you have any Mindstorms?

40) What parts or features of LEGO do you find useless?

41) What do you think of the colors of LEGO?

42) What do you think of people who say that LEGO bricks are just children’s toys?

43) What parts do you want right now?

44) Have you ever bought anything from the LEGO Sports line?

45) Do you find the LEGO Sports line interesting?

46) What are your thoughts on the rumor about the end of the Star Wars license?

47) What do you use to organize your parts?

48) What’s more important to you than LEGO?

49) What LEGO do you plan to buy in 2006?

50) You’re halfway through. How do you feel?

51) What would you do if you could live in a world made of LEGO?

52) Have you had a particularly heroic episode in relation to your LEGO?

53) Do you have a Brickshelf account?

54) What LEGO Web sites do you like to visit?

55) What title do you have [like “Minifig Customizer” or “LEGO Photographer”]?

56) Go ahead and brag about your LEGO.

57) What do you think of the LEGO Stores?

58) What are your feelings about LEGO sets that aren’t available in your country?

59) What about clone brands?

60) Is your future dream to become a LEGO Master Builder?

61) If you had a million dollars, how much of it would you spend on LEGO?

62) What was the best set released in 2005?

63) On a scale of 1 to 100, where would you place your LEGO building skills?

64) What LEGO do you want for Christmas?

65) How would you improve LEGO?

66) What do you think of Belville?

67) Have you ever participated in a LEGO contest?

68) What movie would you like to see turned into a LEGO license?

69) What’s your favorite LEGO set [yes, it’s a duplicate question]?

70) What makes LEGO so great?

71) What do you think of $600 LEGO [nobody seems to know what this question means]?

72) What do you think of sets that are no longer available?

73) Where do you always buy your LEGO?

74) Is the place where you live a good LEGO environment?

75) Do you currently have a stock of ideas?

76) If you were a minifig in a medieval LEGO war, what would be your rank?

77) What do you think is interesting about your LEGO creations?

78) How many minifigs do you own?

79) What’s the most expensive LEGO set you’ve ever bought?

80) What was the set you always wanted as a kid?

81) Have you ever made a LEGO movie?

82) Do you have any friends or acquaintences who are LEGO fans?

83) Do you have a particularly unique way you use a LEGO piece?

84) What’s your favorite Bionicle mask?

85) What’s your favorite game on LEGO.com?

86) What are your thoughts on “bad” train set #4561?

87) How many sets from the Train theme do you have?

88) How many train motors do you own?

89) What do you think of LEGO games (like ones for Game Boy Advance®)?

90) Have you ever been to LEGOLAND?

91) What would you do if you entered a “Dark Age?”

92) What do you think was the worst set LEGO ever released?

93) What type of creation do you most admire by professional-level LEGO builders?

94) What company do you think is The LEGO Company’s arch-nemesis?

95) Have you ever used LEGO design software (like LDraw, MLCad, or LEGO Digital Designer)?

96) Have you ever built anything that incorporated a motor?

97) Have you ever seen LEGO at a second-hand store?

98) Have you ever bought LEGO at a second-hand store?

99) Have you ever sold LEGO at a second-hand store?

100) Have you ever rebuilt a train?

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“Moon-Viewing Sake” by Ichigou

Continuing from Sugegas’s “Udon-Making,” Ichigou has posted his first vignette, a shiritori entry titled “Moon-Viewing Sake:”

Moon-viewing, or tsukimi, parties usually take place on the night of the full moon in August. During these parties, people get together to listen to traditional music, compose poetry, and partake of traditional moon-viewing foods and beverages, including of course sake. (And for those who care about proper pronunciation of foreign words, it’s pronounced saké, as in LEGO! If it were pronounced “saki,” it would be spelled that way!)

The robed monk, the bamboo, and the inverted goblet to represent the sake bottle all combine to make this a wonderful, distinctly Japanese vignette.

“Udon-Making” by Sugegasa

Continuing from mumu’s wife’s “Kitarou,” Sugegasa recently posted a new entry, a vignette called “Udon-Making.” (Notice how the U in “Kitarou” carries over to the U in “Udon-Making?” Not all of them work in English like this, but this is a rare example of one that does.)

For those of you who haven’t had Japanese food lately, udon is a type of Japanese noodle made from wheat. (Soba is made from buckwheat.) Udon is generally served in a broth, with seafood, meat, or vegetables, although my favorite is cold udon you dip into a sauce, with various garnishes.

Udon is made by rolling out the dough, folding it over, repeating this process several times, and then cutting the dough into the noodles. Udon shops often feature a window where you can see the udon cook making fresh noodles. (One of my fondest memories is of the udon shop that occupied the first floor of the English school where my dad’s church met. I spent many hours overlooking the main street of Himeji, with the world-famous Himeji Castle dominating the end of the street.)

What I like about this vignette is that Sugegasa captures the rolling pin and dough perfectly, with just two simple pieces. The overall color scheme makes the minifig stand out nicely, though I’m not sure what Peter Pettigrew is doing… ;-)

“Kitarou” by mumu’s wife

In some families, the husband and wife build together. (Ahem! I said…) One such family is the mumu household. Mumu frequently posts creations by his wife, including several recent entries in the long-running shiritori word game.

Mumu’s wife’s most recent contribution is a group of three (four?) minifigs from the long-running Anime series Gegege no Kitarou. Sort of like the Japanese Scooby-Doo or an animated Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the series features a title character (Kitarou) who fights ghosts, monsters, and other nasties alongside his father, a disembodied human eye.

I like the tan hinge pieces as wooden sandals, the black turban as Kitarou’s hair, and the 1×1 white clip piece as tiny little feet on Medama Oyaji (“Pops the Eyeball”).

(I don’t actually know much about the show, since I wasn’t allowed to watch it growing up. Ghosts and monsters were just too close to the occult for my missionary parents.)

More shiritori entries comin’ right up!

Japanese New Year’s Cards: “Nengajyou”

An important New Year’s tradition in Japan is to send out New Year’s greeting cards, called nengajyou. The cards often feature the animal from the Chinese zodiac for that year (2006 is the year of the dog). Although these cards usually take the form of postcards, several Japanese LEGO bloggers have posted wonderful electronic New Year’s cards.

First up, mumu posts a wonderful card on I Love Cute LEGO!:

And ayucow does likewise on Bacalogue:

Finally, Edwin (a New Zealander posting in Japanese) has posted a pug-themed card made by Edamame05. (Linking directly to the image doesn’t seem to work, so click the link to see the card.)

Japanese New Year’s Decorations by izzo

In much the same way that Christmas has many traditional decorations, Japanese New Year’s (celebrated on Januray 1st) has its own share of traditional decorations. Brickshelf user izzo presents several representative LEGO creations based on these decorations:

First up, a traditional wreath made from pine boughs, paper, rope, and a mandarin orange, or mikan. These wreaths appear on or above doors, and even on the front of cars, trucks, busses, and other vehicles:

Next, a kadomatsu, which are placed on both sides of a doorway or gate. Kadomatsu are made from three bamboo stalks cut at an angle, pine boughs, plum branches, and other elements:

Next, a kagamimochi, which homeowners place in their decorative alcove, or tokonoma. Kagamimochi are a pair of stacked rice cakes, together with some small pine boughs and a mikan:

Finally — and this is by far my personal favorite — izzo presents a lion dancer with a fantastic mask:

izzo also has a home page.

If you’d like to learn more about New Year’s day in Japan, Wikipedia has a reasonably good article. Google also works.

LEGO INC

I recently blogged about Brickshelf user comic’s creations based on Hayao Miyazaki films, promising to highlight his blog here on Pan-Pacific Bricks.

Ichigou and Nigou regularly (sometimes daily) post new stop-motion LEGO Star Wars movies. You have to see them to believe them, so head on over to LEGO INC and check them out for yourself!

The movies are in Windows Media (WMV) format, so you’ll need Windows Media Player, available for free from Microsoft. The movies themselves are in English, with Japanese subtitles. They also maintain a master list of all the movies they’ve posted, broken out by episode. Pretty darn cool!

Japanese Figure Skater is a LEGO Fan

Japanese figure skater Mao Asada, currently in first place (Washington Post – requires registration) in the ISU Figure Skating Grand Prix Finals being held in Tokyo, is apparently a LEGO fan. According to her official Web site her hobbies include jigsaw puzzles and LEGO.

What set Japanese bloggers buzzing today was the one item she picked up off the ice after her routine — a LEGO bag.

EDIT (12/22/05): Mao Asada won the Grand Prix championship on December 17, but will likely not be allowed to go to the Olympics in Turin early next year. But wait, there’s good news! Here’s a quick translation of the first paragraph from a follow-up article in a Japanese newspaper:

Mao Asada: Reward for winning is ‘LEGO’
Mao Asada (age 15), who won the Figure Skating Grand Prix Finals for the first time, participated on the 19th in a press conference for Japanese National Championship (12/23-12/25) entrants. “I’m going to do two Triple Axels,” she said enthusiastically. In the midst of the discussion on the age limit that may prevent her from entering the Olympics in Turin, she innocently exclaimed, for winning the Grand Prix Finals “I’m going to get LEGO blocks.”

So her LEGO hobby is even showing up in sports section headlines!

Japanese LEGO Builders

This post collects all of the Brickshelf galleries and Web sites I’ve found that feature LEGO creations by Japanese builders. I’ll update this list (and alphabetize it at some point) as I encounter more. If you have ideas for galleries or sites that should be listed here, feel free to drop me a line at dunechaser AT gmail DOT com.

Incidentally, Sachiko Akinaga’s site, Let’s LEGO, has a great link list as well. Her site includes an English version, so navigating it is a snap!

Moko

Let’s LEGO

Sugegasa

showtime

Takeshi Itou

Tuwake-de-Sondake

MisaQa

Edge

Nobuyuki Sasaki

Masahiro Yanagi

nyanta

nakano

komi

LEGO Style

LMO-JAPAN

comic

sekiyama

squieu

nori

LEGO ROBO PLAN

zizy

Toshiya

hiron

mumu

A Japanese Word Game in LEGO

So there’s this Japanese word game called “shiritori” (しりとり). Basically, players say words in sequence, each player starting the next word with the last letter (or kana) of the previous word. (Read the WikiPedia article if you care about the detailed rules.)

“How the heck is this related to LEGO?” you ask. Back in April, Uda-san posted the first creation, along with the LEGO-specific rules of the game. Since, then, more than 50 creations have been posted as part of this ongoing game. mumu has meticulously updated the master list as each new creation is posted. Even if you can’t read Japanese, there are plenty of interesting creations to keep you occupied for quite a while!

There’s no equivalent word game in English that I can think of, but it would certainly be interesting to see some sort of ongoing sequence of creations among English-speaking LEGO fans. Then again, I suppose Joe Vig qualifies. Perhaps it’s time to introduce him to Japanese builders! :-)

Ozumo by Nelson Yrizarry

Nelson’s new vignette Ozumo seems the perfect transition from posts over at Pan-Pacific Bricks back here to my original blog. He’s Photoshopped a very nice magazine cover to showcase his yokozuna:

Chiyonofuji (千代の富士) was one of the greatest yokozunas of recent history. (A yokozuna is the top-ranked wrestler, followed by ozeki.) Chiyonofuji was active throughout the 70’s and 80’s, along with the Hawaiian wrestler Konishiki (小錦), who became an ozeki and paved the way for many of the current wrestlers from outside Japan — including Akebono (曙), the first foreign-born yokozuna.

Nelson’s action scenes are also great:

Finally, another shot of the yokozuna without the magazine text, showing how he created the kesho-mawashi, or ceremonial belt:

Incidentally, the building technique Nelson uses for his sumo wrestlers is called BrickFa, a building style recently developed by Mike “Count Blockula” Crowley. Between this technique and the technique developed by Moko, we’re really starting to see some interesting designs that add additional posability to the traditional minifig.

Exo-Force aka トクシュブタイ

LEGO recently announced a new theme to be released in January 2006. The official Exo-Force Web site on LEGO.com lists the products, and includes an online comic.

It is important to remember that this is not a licensed theme like Star Wars or Harry Potter. This theme was developed by LEGO on their own. However, the theme is clearly inspired in no small part by Japanese animation (“anime”), including the sort of shows that feature people riding around in big giant robots, or “mecha,” like Gundam and Evangelion. The hero’s names are all Japanese, and a variety of Japanese characters appears on the mecha. The place names identified in the comic are also clearly Japanese, such as “Tenchi Bridge” (“tenchi” most likely means “heavan and earth”).

The official Exo-Force logo features four Japanese kanji characters, 特殊部隊, behind the English “Exo-Force:”

Seven katakana characters, トクシュブタイ, also appear on the red bar beneath the logo. The terms 特殊部隊 and トクシュブタイ are just two ways of writing the same thing — both are pronounded “tokushyu butai.” But what does “tokushyu butai” mean? Instead of creating a unique name in Japanese that corresponds to “Exo-Force,” it appears that LEGO is using the generic term for “special forces” (Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Delta Force, and so on) as the name for this new theme. (Incidentally, 飛行部隊 also appears on the right side of the red bar at the bottom of the page. Pronounced “hikou butai,” this means “air corp” or “flying squadron” or something… Similarly, the characters that appear on the mecha are essentially meaningless out of context.)

Reaction among English-speaking LEGO fans has been mixed, as the lengthy discussions on both FBTB and Classic-Castle.com show. In Japan, several bloggers have featured Exo-Force and commented on this new theme.

mumu remains fairly objective, but people who commented on this post question whether this theme will be popular here in the United States. On LegoWheels, muu wonders whether English-speakers will know what “tokushyu butai” means and states flatly that he won’t be purchasing these sets. Azumu (also of Brickshelf fame) calls the theme “half-baked,” saying, “Why not just go all the way and make Transformer or Zoid LEGO? … But I’ll buy them anyway — for the hair, dangit!”

Finally, Edge compares this theme to Manga Spawn and writes:

On pages 74 through 77 in issue 94 of Figure King, there is a special color section. I was shocked to find an interview with LEGO Japan! Apparently, this theme was developed in Denmark with the participation of a Japanese development staff member. (Despite that, the quality of this line…) They seriously want this line to be popular among Japanese AFOLs. LOL!

Other bloggers share Azumu and Edge’s sentiment. One blogger even called the use of all the Japanese text “idiotic.” They think the line is a bit dumb, but they really, really want the hair. A few Japanese bloggers certainly don’t represent　the opinions of an entire market, but it’s interesting to see how closely the online reaction of Japanese AFOLs mirrors that of English-speaking AFOLs.