The architecture of many Japanese buildings is quite different than American architecture. When I started to model Japanese prototype, I purchased and assembled several kits to give me a better idea of how a structure should look if I were going to do any scratch building. These are some of the building kits I have completed. I posted on the construction of several of them and there are links to those posts. I will continue to add to this gallery as I build more kits.
This was the first one I did. Most Tomix kits actually come assembled but can be taken apart for painting and then re-assembled. They also come with quite a few detail parts.
This is a Kato building that I did. Like the Tomix kits, these are very well designed and are already assembled. This one has been dis-assembled, painted to take the plastic look away, then re-assembled.
This next one is from Green Max. Green Max kits are more like American style kits with a bunch of parts all the same color that have to be glued together. They are very adaptable. This kit comes with enough parts to make 2 apartment buildings like this one or they can be combined to make a taller or longer building.
When Green Max came out with their modular kits, I purchased several to try them out and custom build some unique structures. This 5 story building is a Business Hotel and Business Lounge. These are common near train stations and have very small but full featured rooms that serve business travelers. The signs are stickers that came with the kits.This is only a modest example of what can be done with these kits. Using these kits is a great way to get a feel for the architectural style of Japanese buildings. Look for Green Max 2101, 2102, 2103, and 2104.
The Aoshima apartment building was the first kit I had seen were all the parts were realistic painted and was great fun to build. I built it as directed but added 10 LED porch lights and also lighted several apartments with LED's. I made a series of posts on this project while I was building it.
Green Max kit # 34 was the basis of this project to create a bit of a typical Japanese residential neighborhood. Details of this project were covered in these posts.
TomyTec kit # 66 was my first of the TomyTec pre-painted kits. It is part of a set of several kits for creating a hot spring hotel complex. I used just this one building from the set to create my own version of a hot springs hotel in this series of posts.
I modified this one to use with kit # 27 and some scratch built platforms in this series of posts.