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1.8 million LEGO Used to Create Map of Japan
From Spoon-Tamago website, by Johnny on August 9, 2012
I know what you’re thinking: ugh, another LEGO project using a gazillion LEGO.
Indeed, the Internet seems to be teeming with
hey-look-at-what-I-did-with-LEGO-type projects, but this one seemed noteworthy.
In celebrating the 50th anniversary of the iconic building blocks being
introduced into Japan, LEGO’s Japanese subsidiary sponsored a cross-country
workshop in which over 5000 people in 6 different regions collaborated to create
a gigantic map of Japan.The pieces that were assembled at each site then
traveled to Tokyo, where they were put on display for one massive LEGO map.
Dubbed “Build Up Japan,” the event – rather than
recreating existing landmarks – encouraged kids to picture what they want Japan
to look like, and to create imaginary structures. The future of Japan was, quite
literally, in their hands. And the kids delivered.
The festivities took place during March and April of this year.
LEGO Japan: Build Up Japan LEGOsta.jp
Video on: YouTube.com
Pictures on the site:
Spoon-tamago.com
-end of report-
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LEGO Planning to build LEGOLAND in Nagoya
NAGOYA (Kyodo) -- Merlin Entertainments Group Ltd., the British operator of the
LEGOLAND theme parks, said Friday it will enter into negotiations with the
Nagoya municipal government to build Japan’s first LEGOLAND in the city, with
an eye toward opening it in 2015.
Nagoya, while close to both Tokyo and Osaka, has a large population as well as
advanced transportation and other infrastructure, John Ussher, Merlin’s general
manager of development, said at a press conference at the municipal office,
explaining the reasons for the selection of the city as the final candidate
location for the park in Japan.
Merlin plans to lease some 10 hectares of land on the Kinjo Pier in Nagoya,
which are owned by the city government and the Nagoya Port Authority.
LEGOLAND is a chain of theme parks based on construction toys manufactured by
the LEGO Group of Denmark. They are primarily marketed to young families.
At present, there are a total of five LEGOLAND parks in Denmark, Britain, the
United States(2 parks) and Germany.
(Mainichi Japan) October 28, 2011
Mainichi.jp
-end of report-
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I’ll be traveling to Japan to contribute (loan) LEGO bricks and expertise to the
65th World Science Fiction Convention “Nippon 2007”, the
first Worldcon held in Asia, happening in Yokohama on Thu 30 Aug to Mon 3 Sep
2007. Although it’s a membership-driven event, parts of the con will be open to
the public. I’ll be reporting on my blog, possibly
daily.
I’ve managed to pack a decent parts and colors selection into a single large
rolling suitcase, so long as attendees limit themselves to Xpod-sized models --
no SHIPs at this event. I’m not yet sure what activities or where --
possibly just an open build, or maybe impromptu QuikWars sessions -- but it’ll
be fun finding out.
Not too many prefabbed MOCs, though. Gotta optimize luggage volume somehow.
Although LEGO bricks have appeared at at least two “regional” SF cons in the US
(Balticon and Philcon), this may be the
first time they’ve done so at a Worldcon. And although Japanese LEGO fans
certainly exist (sometimes called “JFOLs”), it’s a bit tricky for Western AFOLs
to meet or communicate with them. For instance, I have no idea if any JFOLs
will coincidentally be attending -- my efforts at email outreach were
disappointing. Hopefully this convention will help bring the two camps closer
together.
I may also find out what LEGO Retail looks like in Japan, since I’ll be visiting
Narita, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe in addition to Yokohama. (There’s a “Click Brick”
store in the mall near the Pacifico Yokohama convention center.) Watch this
space for reports.
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BS (when modded)
Flickr
Hi all,
After reading Ben’s article about building steam trains I decided to try out my
new BBB wheels and build one in real life (thus making sure it could run around
curves). I’d seen a few Japanese steamers in my searches so decided to try one
of them: the C58-363 Paleo
Express.
Please let me know what you think and please feel free to offer any criticisms
and suggestions you feel like. I’m still a bit unsteady on my feet with steam
greebling so advice in that area would be more than welcome.
Thanks,
Tim
PS. If I don’t respond, my apologies. I’ll be on holidays for the next week and
don’t know if I’ll have internet access.
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Hi, everyone...
A documentary called “Lovemarks-LEGO” will be broadcast for the first time this
weekend. I was originally told it was going to be a full-length film about
people’s passions towards brands like LEGO, IKEA, Starbucks (etc), but it seems
it has been shortened to a half hour and will deal only with LEGO. (Maybe?)
Lovemarks - LEGO
Channel 51, Horizon
Saturday September 30th
8:30 p.m. (20:30)
Hong Kong
The documentary was filmed by Fuji TV in Hong Kong, but it may also run in other
countries that have Fuji TV, or on extended satellite networks.
Last year, the filmmakers filmed a live
model-build and interviewed both Nathan Sawaya and I as part of the
documentary. They said they’d also interviewed other folks around the world,
including folks from TLG.
Sean
- - -
LEGO Certified Professional
www.seankenney.com
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Since I’ve successfully run LEGO-based events at the Philcon SF/F convention for the past three years, I’ve been asked to
investigate doing the same for the 65th World Science Fiction Convention --
Nippon2007, the first Worldcon to be held in Japan,
in August of next year. But I need your suggestions and tips! Thanks for
your help, everybody; and remember, this is still a feasibility study.
Who? First I’d have to locate American (etc.) AFOLs planning to attend.
Japanese AFOLdom can contribute even if its members don’t attend -- they can
mail-in MOCs (assuming I get some assistance with Japanese parcel post). But
actually contacting Japanese builders is, we all know, difficult. (I can get
recruitment announcements posted via the website and hardcopy progress reports.)
What events? An exhibit is easiest, with MOCs provided by Japanese and
overseas attendees. An open build would be trickier to organize, because a
parts supply would be needed -- and although I happily loan mine to Philcon, and
the Worldcon will be shipping a bunch of stuff from the U.S., I’m not in a rush
to send my own pieces halfway around the globe.
What theme? It’s an SF convention, and it’s in Japan, so the most obvious
models would be mecha -- replicas and original designs. But fans everywhere
build everything, so there’s really no “distinctive local flavor” to that -- is
there? Models inspired by the author and artist GoHs (guests of honor) would be
topical -- that’ll require some research.
(Obviously fantasy castles? “Final Fantasy”- and “Miyazaki”-esque flying
contraptions? Gojira & Co.? Mindstorms robots?)
Where? Any suggestions as to where else I should make this announcement?
Mecha Hub and Classic
Space are the first that come to mind.
Followups to DelVaLUG since that’s my home club, and it’s low-traffic. Other
discussion elsewhere as necessary.
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Announcing the premiere of Joe Vig... to Japan!
In the image, the Japanese characters in black read “Bonyari Bouzu”, which
means “Oblivious guy”.
The red characters read “Joo Viggu” (where “Joo” -
with a long ‘o’ - sounds much like his English name “Joe”).
There are many famous vignette builders from Japan, but until now Joe Vig has
been mysteriously absent in their work. The only logical explanation for this is
the language barrier.
To overcome this obstacle, I have been working with Andrew Becraft of
Pan-Pacific Bricks to translate
the Official Joe Vig page into
Japanese. Andrew quickly made the translation, and contacted Japanese builder,
Izzo for his take on it.
Izzo must have been quite intrigued with the Joe Vig phenomenon, since he
quickly built and posted FOUR Joe Vig vignettes!
Without further ado, here is the Japanese version of the Official Joe Vig page!
We hope to see many new and interesting Joe Vig vignettes from our fellow
builders in Japan!!
Enjoy!
“Big Daddy” Nelson
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Well, after recieving an email from John Barnes with a pic of a Shinkansen, I
decided that I had to have a go at one. Wanting a quick build I decided to go
for the 700T the Taiwanese released Shinkansen. See it
here.
BS gallery
Sorry, there’s no high quality render this time. MPD available on request.
Hope you like it and please give me feedback.
Tim
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Hi all,
Just uploaded another train, this time a Japanese
EF64. This had been sitting on my computer for ages as I had a couple of
problems with it, one of which was the door which I’ve now fixed using the fence
offsetting techniques discussed recently (yay for fences, see
here!).
The image clicks through to a high quality render.
BS Gallery
The train is BoBoBo and features a very basic BoBoBo frame which you can see in
the included MPD. Thanks must go to the person whose panto design I ripped off
(sorry, can’t remember the model or the builder :( )
Any comments appreciated!
Tim
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In lugnet.people, Mark Neumann wrote:
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In lugnet.build.mecha, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
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Hi all,
Does anyone know how to contact the builder with the brickshelf ID
Sugegasa? I’m
sure everyone in .mecha knows his work very well.
Bruce
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Let us know if you have any luck Bruce. Getting a hold of the Japanese
builders can be a challenge.
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His weblog is here.(Japanese font set needed)
http://blog.kansai.com/sugegasasugegasa
I’ve tried to leave a comment to his weblog that you wanted to contact him.
## ayucow/Ayumi Hayase
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Hi all,
Does anyone know how to contact the builder with the brickshelf ID
Sugegasa? I’m sure
everyone in .mecha knows his work very well.
Bruce
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In lugnet.lego, Richie Dulin wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Timothy Gould wrote:
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X-Posted to .loc.au/nz/jp/hk in the hopes that this will spur more people
from the region into applying
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Although more people applying would be nice to see, the real requirement is
better people applying.
Cheers
Richie Dulin
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Fine, I’ve removed .nz from the crossposting.
Tim
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Timothy Gould wrote:
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X-Posted to .loc.au/nz/jp/hk in the hopes that this will spur more people
from the region into applying
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Although more people applying would be nice to see, the real requirement is
better people applying.
Cheers
Richie Dulin
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Dear Jake,
I am not trying to attack a faceless monster here, I am responding to Lenny’s
claims that you guys were personally being in some way harrassed/ attacked/
asserted against in my original post. I believe that you love your job enough
to do what your company would prefer and if they HAD said to concentrate on
NA/Europe I suspect you would have done so. Now that you have said the
reasons were otherwise I can lay the blame solely at your feet :P
Thank you for taking the time to explain that there was little geographical
bias and I hope that next time you will find a suitable candidate from the
other parts of the world.
Yours,
Tim
X-Posted to .loc.au/nz/jp/hk in the hopes that this will spur more people
from the region into applying
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Whoops! Sorry to reply to myself, I set the followupto, not X-post. Stupid me!
Tim
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I finally got my hands on a copy of the Japanese language publication of
The Brick Testament: Stories from the
Book of Genesis, which apprently was released last December:
“Plays with the Heaven and Earth Creative Thing Abnormal Play” is how Google
Translate renders the title in English, but that may not be 100% accurate. :)
As you can see above, the Japanese publisher decided to take some free reign in
redesigning the cover art. The cover is a dust jacket that folds out to reveal
more characters on the inner sleeve of both the front and back:
While overall I prefer the original English cover, this version does have its
charms, such as the upside-down rainbow, and Shem making the cover while God is
relegated to the fold-over.
The book’s content is largely the same inside, though the design is a little
different. As you can see from a couple of sample pages, the text is given in
both Japanese and English, each story has its own background color, and the
image borders have a slightly 3D effect and one “interlocking” side:
The Introduction and About the Author sections are also given in both languages.
I’d love to know how accurately those come across in Japanese:
And finally, if you’re curious what the cover of the book looks like underneath
the dust jacket,
here’s a look.
I’d known for some time that a Japanese version of the book was coming out, so
occasionally over the last year I would search for it on
Amazon.co.jp. Although I was able to find my English and German language books
there, I didn’t find the Japanese version apparently because for that one both
the book’s title and my name were converted into Japanese characters.
Anyhow, I’m a little late with this announcement, but I’m delighted to share the
news that my book is now available to the people of Japan!
-Brendan Powell Smith
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In lugnet.build.microscale, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
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Hey all,
Does anyone know who hitahita-05 is? I don’t see any sign of them on Lugnet.
Check out their great microscale train.
While you’re there, check out their other galleries for more great creations,
including this microscale freighter.
Bruce
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XPosted to .jp as I think that is a shortened form Japanese name.
Tim
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In lugnet.build.vignette, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
SNIP
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Others are very vignette-y (though due to their larger size I haven’t blogged
these on VignetteBricks):
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There a few more shots of Sigezo’s entries:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=124132.
It’s very cool how those ‘vignette-y’ MOCs were done on a larger scale (even
larger than the guidelines listed in
our FAQ).
Too bad there were no Joe Vig vignettes...I’m sure they’d have some interesting
takes on poor Joe. Perhaps someone in lugnet.loc.jp can help us to bridge that
gap.
“Big Daddy” Nelson
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Hi all,
Check out this gallery.
My interpretation is that a Japanese LUG or fest had a contest with the
constraint that the creation had to sit on a 16x16 baseplate (if anyone knows
details about this I’d love to know more). There is a great variation in the
entries:
Some of these are really interesting sculptures, with a very Japanese-cultural
flair:
Others are very vignette-y (though due to their larger size I haven’t blogged
these on VignetteBricks):
And I’m also posting to microscale for the sake of this ultra-cool microscale
scene:
Anyway, there are 12 other entries as well. I’d encourage everyone to check out
the whole gallery.
Bruce
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