This morning, I was hungry. Probably because I`m still jet-lagged, and in British time it is late evening. I`ve always loved midnight snacks. Sadly the cupboards are quite bare, so I had to improvise whatever I could with whatever I had. I decided to make the popular Japanese dish, omrice. A mash-up of the words omelette and rice, it is exactly as the name suggests, fried rice with an omelette flopped on top. I had eggs. I had rice. I had ketchup. I had a plan.

First I fried up an omelette using three eggs. This was then set aside. Next, I fried the rice in some ketchup for about 5 minutes. The final stage, and the most tricky, was to flop the omelette on top of the rice. I splashed some more ketchup on top of the omelette, and the meal was ready.

Painting Large Areas

Several different shades of grey were needed, and these were obtained by mixing. However, the model is of such a size that a lot of paint is required, so I`d have to get the painting of a whole colour done before I could leave the model, as mixing that colour up again would probably not result in exactly the same shade. This of course happened several times. Moreover, painting the kit in acrylics meant that several layers were necessary in order to get a reasonable smooth look. In future, I probably wouldn`t try to hand brush a model of this size.

My first round of painting was far too dark. So out came the acrylic retarder and the paint was cleaned up. The nice thing about acrylic paint is that you can actually do this fairly easily, although it`s a bit messy. I mixed up some lighter paint and tried again. This time the greys looked to be about the correct shade, and comparing with my references, I decided to let it stand at that. The whole model was then painted in these shades of grey. This took the better part of two weeks, as I had to paint and let it dry in layers. Very time consuming!

Detail Painting

Next came detail painting. This was much easier and quite good fun to do, although the windows were a bit of a slog. There are hundreds of them! I decided to paint some in black and some in white, as I assume that in the future people don`t leave the lights on when no-one is in the room. Just like we do now, right?

Decals

After detail painting came the decal stage of the model. Again, I ran into a few problems. Some of the decals do not exactly fit into the recessed areas on the model where they are supposed to go and require some trimming. This was very fiddly and frustrating. I used warm water and found that the decals applied easily enough, although some absolutely refused to adhere to the model. I had since learned that this is probably due to the matt finish. Apparently a gloss finish is best for getting decals to stick. Unfortunately, the Enterprise is not that shiny and I didn`t want to go through so many layers. However, with some perseverence I managed to get all the decals to stick down.

Top-coat

Now comes the final stage, Top-coating. I`ve never top-coated anything before.  First I masked off the clear plastic parts of the model. Outside we went. I tried to spray evenly all over the model, moving horizontally and not staying in one spot too long. It looked OK but I knew I would have to wait for it to dry first. Once it was dry, I found that there was indeed a nice overall matt finish to the model. But…the decals didn`t look so happy. They had started to peel at the edges. Also, in some areas of the model, things looked a little cloudy, and there were some tiny paint runs. I decided to let it go at that however.

Conclusion

Overall, I think it turned out OK for a first attempt at a kit. It looks the part, if you don`t look too close. I`m not sure if I`m proud enough to display it though, as there are many rough patches. Eight things I have learned in the making of this model:

1. Hand-brushing very large areas is not easy. Masking and spraying is probably better. I might invest in an airbrush sometime.

2. Better masking on clear areas. Paint does not come off clear plastic once it is on!

3. Use setting solution on decals. I don`t have any of this, but I`m going to try to find some for next time.

4. Apply decals to a gloss finish.

5. Spend more time on the filling and sanding stage. There are still some unsightly seam-lines that I didn`t fill properly.

6. Mix up plenty of paint so I don`t have to try mixing the same shade later.

7. When applying top coat I need to be more sparing.

8. I would probably choose a smaller, easier kit for my next project, and try to build up my skills a bit. 

The Ninja Godzilla shouted, “WaaaAAAaaait Asura”! You stole our ninja box! ” The Asura said, “What a stupid thing. I just passed this village. I don’t  know anything about it.”　The Ninja Godzilla said, “No!!! You’re telling a lie. You are going to escape. Escape after defeating me if you want to escape. “

The evil Ninja Godzilla appeared there suddenly. The evil ninja godzilla said. “Your fighting partner is me.”

Then big Ninja Godzilla suddenly appeared. The big Ninja Godzilla said. “Your fighting partner is me. I know that you became friends and stole their ninja box. Escape after defeating me if you both want to escape. ” The Asura and the evil Ninja Godzilla said. “The big Ninja Godzilla is strongest Ninja Godzilla in the world! We had better escape. “

The Asura and the evil Ninja Godzilla said, ‘We will escape on the boat.’ The Ninja Godzilla and Big Ninja Gozilla said ,‘WaaaAAAaaaiiiitttt!!!!! Come baaaAAAaaaccckkk!!! We will attack yooooOOOooouuuu!!!’

Don’t allow dogs to do their business in the flowers.

These stern woodland creatures warn you about the consequences of littering.

Rockslide! Looks like some of these rocks may explode.

Clean up after your dog. Looks embarrassed doesn’t he?

These monkeys set an example for your children while playing in the park.

Is this mouse trying to move the beer bottle? Or is his arm stuck in there?

Sunrise as seen from the top of Mount Fuji. Picture taken by me in August 2007.

Click the picture for the full version.

It stayed still long enough for me to take the picture, then slithered back into the hedge. I didn’t want to get too close as I wasn’t sure if it was venomous or not. I was later told that they are not, but I bet they can still give a nasty bite if provoked. I spotted another one later, briefly, as it moved through the foliage. It was a warm, sunny day so I suppose that brought them out. I’m not sure exactly what variety of snake it is, but I’ll do a bit of research and try to identify it.

Does anyone know?

Bonus reptile! Here is a picture of a lizard spotted on the same walk. Again, I don’t know what kind of lizard it is. My knowledge of the local wildlife could stand some improvement.

1)Godzilla 2003 says,

‘This is only for you!’

Godzilla 1968 says,

‘ Wow! Thanks,mate! You are sweet.’

2)Godzilla 2003 says,

‘This is only for you!’

Mecha Godzilla 2003 says,

‘ Wow! Thanks,mate! You are sweet.’

3)Godzilla 1968 meets Mecha Godzilla 2003.

‘How did you get the flower? If you got it from Godzilla 2003, we must fight!!!’

Godzilla 2003 says,

‘I must run away!!!’

4)Godzilla 2003 says,

‘I will escape on the boat.’

Godzilla 1968 and Mecha Gozilla 2003 says,

‘WaaaAAAaaaiiiitttt!!!!! Come baaaAAAaaaccckkk!!! We will attack yooooOOOooouuuu!!!’

Mark won the bingo of his friend’s wedding ceremony party last year and got a pair of tickets to the Tokyo Disney resort!!

But we did not have time to go there last year because we have been very busy. However, we decided that we would go to the Disney resort last week because the expiration date of the ticket was April 24 of this year.

There were two theme parks of Disneyland and DisneySea in the Tokyo Disney resort, and we went to DisneySea which is for adults. Because you can drink beer there;-p

We had good time and want to go again sometime.

If you are interested in Tokyo Disney Resort, this is web site of Tokyo Disney Resort in English.

http://www.tokyodisneyresort.co.jp/index_e.html

First I had to finish the filling and sanding. Thanks to the internet, I worked out that I had to wet the sandpaper in order to get anywhere with the sanding process. Having done this I spent a few hours grinding away until everything looked reasonably smooth, and there were no nasty gaps left in the plastic. So far so good.

You can almost imagine this taking pot-shots at the Borg cube already, right?

On saturday morning I had a day with little to do, so I thought this would be a great chance to spray paint the model and get down to the fun business of doing the detail painting. Sadly, as soon as I threw open the curtains I saw that rain was approaching, yet again. Thinking I was able to move faster than nature, I hurried out onto the balcony and set up my spray area by taping large sheets of newspaper to form a small enclosure. This is so that our landlord will be happy on the day we move out.

The spraying zone. Add your own wind sounds to get the full effect.

First of all, I had to mask off all the clear parts so that they wouldn’t get covered in paint. I used regular masking tape for this. I had to use a craft knife to cut the masking tape into the correct shapes to fit the clear parts. There was a slight disaster, as the craft knife cut the masking tape, slipped off the model and proceeded to carve a smile into my finger-tip. Blood everywhere. Me building a model kit is turning out to be a bit like those ‘Reg Prescott’ sketches that Kenney Everett used to do.

An example of masking. Badly, as it turned out. Sunglasses required when viewing this image.

I have never spray painted anything before, so I was nervous about doing it. I had heard horror stories about paint-coloured snot from reading around the internet, so decided to wear a mask to increase the safety factor. I was using Tamiya light-grey spray paint for this operation, and as as is generally recommended, I started spraying from quite far away, about 12 inches, and moved in until I got the best result, about 6 inches away from the model. After I had done the top-side, I moved closer to check it out. To my horror, all the details had now been completely obscured by thick, runny, gooey paint. I had put too much on. I grabbed a box of tissues and hurriedly wipe down the whole thing. Luckily this worked, otherwise there would never be a ‘Building the Enterprise Part 6′ and wouldn’t the world be worse off for that? Before anyone asks, I don’t have any pictures of the disaster, as I was too busy panicking. The main thing is that I managed to save it, so was able to go back for another round.

At this point it started to rain, and I had to go back inside. I started to wonder if I should look up ‘acrylic paint removal’ techniques on the internet, just in case.

The finished spray job. Mostly awful, but not entirely without merit!

The rain stopped, and things started to brighten up again, so it was time for another try. I was more sparing, or to put it another way less trigger-happy this time, and the results were much better. After leaving the whole model to dry thoroughly, I came back to it to find a lovely all-over light grey finish, which I proceeded to muck up entirely in the next step. But we’ll get to that in the next installment!

In pieces

Ready for launch

After putting the parts together I noticed several gaps where gaps should not be. These, I realised, needed to be filled somehow in order to give the model a more realistic look. Spaceships don’t have holes in them, do they? So I looked on the internet for a useful ‘how to’ guide to filling and sanding. I already had a good supply of Tamiya putty, which I had bought during my first trip to the model shop, but still needed to get some sandpaper. Now I always thought that there was only one kind of sandpaper, that which you can use on wood when you are building spice racks and the like. I soon learned differently. There are many fine grades of sandpaper, so I went out and got level 600 to level 1200 from a DIY shop. It was pretty cheap. We’ll come back to the sandpaper adventure later.

Sandpaper makes a cameo appearance at the top.

First I had to apply the putty. At this point I realised my hands are not very steady. Frankly I think I made a messier job than I should have done, although the fine details in the plastic are OK, but it looks like it will take a lot of sanding to fix it. Using a cocktail stick I tried to fill the gaps in the plastic joins. I came to realise that putty doesn’t want to go into gaps, it wants to stick to the edges around the gaps instead. I persisted and finally got most of the filling done.

Should it look like this after filling the gaps?

On the other side, things don’t look much better…

It was now that I decided to try some sanding, just to see how it would go. I sanded a bit. No change. I sanded a bit more. All the sand had gone from my sandpaper so I had to cut off a new piece. The same thing happened. No visible change in the putty was observed. Now I know I will be at this for some time! I’ll try different grades of sandpaper next and see if anything happens. I’m beginning to wonder if I bought adamantium putty, it is clearly indestructible.

Now I have to get up the motivation to continue sanding. I know it will be worth it in the end, when I can start painting, but right now I have a similar feeling to the first time I stood at the bottom of Mount Fuji and looked up at the summit.

On the plus side, I bought a nice case with pull out drawers in which to keep my modelling stuff. Now I really feel like this might turn into a hobby. I’m buying accessories!