[Hobby]Eternally loved railroad models- Japanese are enthusiastic for its delicate miniature(vol.1)

Eternally loved railroad models- Japanese are enthusiastic for its delicate miniature

Current Japan embraces hundreds of “maniac” cultures; “anime” (animation), “manga” (comics), games, costume-plays, to mention just a few. Besides those, middle-aged and elderly Japanese are particularly addicted in railroad models.
You might imagine popular gage 00 (1/76, gage width 16.5mm) or gage HO (1/80, gage width 16.5mm), smallest gage Z (1/220, gage width 6.5mm) when you talk about railroad models, but the most favored size in Japan is gage N (1/148-160, gage width 9mm). Why is this? There might be variety of reasons, even so the largest reason is its size of gage N.

It wouldn’t bother you much if you are only to have a few gage O train models (1/48, gage width 29.9mm) as an interior. However, once you start imagining about laying lines for your trains to run around and reviving familiar sceneries around those lines, the space you need for your world would become boundless. Not to mention people in the world with great gardens and huge rooms, hardly any lucky Japanese could realize their fantasy in this tiny little country.

＜Metabo Shogun (General Metabolic Syndrome)＞

References
Kodansha, “Making Showa period’s railroad model” (Weekly magazine) http://shop.kodansha.jp/bc/tetsudomokei/
TOMYTEC, “Streets collection” http://www.tomytec.co.jp/hobby/machi/index.html