miniature
These photos make us want to shrink ourselves down and make a purchase at the mini festival stalls!
Having a rough day? Then sit back, relax, and watch this quiet video of someone expertly crafting tiny cup ramen noodles.
Shunichi Matsuba, a self-proclaimed diorama artist, creates extraordinarily detailed miniature scenes of Japanese life past and present — often using models smaller than a fingertip.
The miniature toy market is huge in Japan. From tiny Hello Kitty baked goods to pint-sized supermarket items and even scaled-down Japanese-style rooms filled with traditional furnishings, you don’t have to be a child with a doll-house to delve into the world of miniature here in Japan.
Adults have become so transfixed with all the adorable items on the market that there are a number of YouTube channels purely dedicated to the art of petite cooking, using everything from tiny utensils to working miniature ovens.
One of the latest videos to appear takes us through the sushi-making process, transporting us to a tiny world that viewers say is so calming it can cure all types of stress and anxiety. Watching this short clip will be the best few minutes of your day!
Typically, nail art in Japan is bold and colorful or just plain huge, but it turns out neither are requisites to being impressive! Sometimes small can be just as amazing as big (at least that’s what we tell ourselves), and one Twitter user has gone a long way to proving that with her diminutive and delicate nail art, created by literally carving the tips of her nails!
We have seen plenty of weird miniature figures over the years, and while some of them have left us scratching our heads, none of them have been quite as unusual as this, the “Haisha Collection” (“Scrap Car Collection”). Beaten, battered, dented, and crumpled, these miniature cars probably won’t be high on anyone’s souvenir list…but then again, we might be wrong!
Japan clearly has no shortage of incredibly realistic miniatures. Only recently, we’ve covered Ginji, the wise hamster behind the world’s smallest izakaya (may he rest in peace), as well as the creator of some remarkable small-scale hangars.
Which brings us to the newest development in this saga: miniature food sets. Many have taken to Twitter to express their love for the ant-sized creations of company Re-ment, a maker of toys and other miscellaneous goods. With names like “Dad, eat the bitter part for me!” and “”Grandma’s House,” these sets recreate each scene with uncanny accuracy, but at a fraction of the size.
We see a lot of unusual things here at RocketNews24, coming in all shapes and sizes, but there is always a little squeal in our hearts when we find a miniature version of…anything. We’ve talked about mini-bonsai, mini-theater seats, mini-books, mini ninja houses, and of course the hamster that tends his own tiny bar. But none of these mini-parties are enough; there needs to be some mini-food! Better yet, how about some tiny food made with real ingredients! It’s time to break out your miniature kitchen sets!
In this consumerist culture of ours, it seems like the never-ending scramble to acquire more and bigger worldly goods and possessions is becoming increasingly futile as economic issues tend to scupper every attempt we make at achieving those perhaps impossible ideals. It’s no wonder, then, that people are increasingly turning to minimalism and simplicity in their lives and in their homes. The Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi extols the virtues of living a life that is simple, rustic and close to nature, and we’ve been seeing elements of this start to crop up increasingly in the west, with the recent adoption of tiny, eco-friendly houses providing a possible alternative to an energy-guzzling modern pile of bricks.
Today we’d like to show you around one such teensy home, modelled around a traditional Japanese house and encompassing only 10 x 20 feet of space. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this mini-house, though, is that it was all made by the hands of one man – American Chris Heininge.
We all know that Japan does “small” well. Whether it’s microtechnology, tiny houses or bonsai, the Japanese are known for their dexterity and being attentive to the tiniest detail.
But a hobbyist and Niconico Douga user known simply as “A” takes attention to detail to a whole new level. In a homage to the three-dimensional worlds created by video game giants Nintendo, A has constructed an ultra-detailed diorama based on the first level of Nintendo 64 classic Super Mario 64 and even recreated the entire world map from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on a scale so small we could barely believe our eyes when we first saw it.
How small are we talking? Find out after the jump!
We all love a good gashapon capsule toy. But whether it’s One Piece characters or doggy bread, getting more than one of the same toy is usually a disappointment. No wonder some collectors skip the vending machine step altogether and buy completed sets second-hand. Duplicates are no fun.
There’s one Japanese toy company that flips that idea on its head, however. Unlike conventional capsule toys, Epoch’s scale models actually look better the more identical items you have! And these miniatures of seemingly mundane items such as school desks, shopping trolleys and folding chairs have proved a runaway hit.
So when our reporter Mr. Sato heard about the latest capsule item from Epoch, he immediately grabbed a bunch of hundred-yen coins and headed out to start collecting…miniature cinema chairs! Here’s what he found.
Just days after their launch, a handful of somewhat worrying images appeared online showing iPhone 6 and 6 Plus smartphones which had bent, apparently after having been kept in their owners’ pockets while sitting. Both Apple and independent reports have suggested that cases of bending are extremely rare, but even so, “bendgate” continues to play on consumers’ minds, no doubt in part due to Apple’s competitors playing it to their advantage and a few overly zealous Android fanboys sharing images of bent iPhones with such frequency that you’d swear they were on Samsung or HTC’s payroll.
Japanese designer and photographer Tatsuya Tanaka, however, is so confident that his iPhone 6 won’t bend that he enlisted the help of 100 tiny friends to put it to the test. As it happens, Apple’s newest smartphone can even take the weight of a zebra, giraffe, polar bear and elephant before it comes anywhere near to getting a case of the bends…
I have never thought I’d be gushing over sewing tools, but here I am, 30 minutes into staring at pictures of this new set of gashapon toys titled “The Shugei Miniature Mascot” (The Handicraft Miniature Mascot) because they are simply too adorable. Who would’ve thought you could turn things typically associated with grandmothers into such desirable collectibles by shrinking them to palm-size? Click to see more of these super cute toys!
Satoshi Araki is an artist who creates miniature dioramas. In one of his brilliantly imagined worlds, a mysterious figure stands in a dark alleyway. In another, a car with smashed-out windows sprawls in front of a bombed-out house in a destroyed city.
Araki sometimes puts a single finger into the frame to show the scale of the tiny scenes, which are sculpted in painstaking detail. His coke cans are smaller than a fingernail; his Vespa model is tiny enough to rest on your thumb.
Back in April, we ran an article on mind-bogglingly tiny kitchens in a bottle. Now, Japanese beverage giant Kirin has gone a step further in another animated short that promotes their soft-drink line, “Sekai no Kitchen Kara” (“From the World’s Kitchens”). Though the multi-brand company is best known for their beers, this yummy non-alcoholic collection emerged after test-kitchen staff visited numerous countries’ bustling kitchens, which are undoubtedly a treasure trove of family traditions and culinary wisdom.
So before you write this off as mere marketing, check out the company’s imaginative stop-motion creation, which amazingly combines 1:48-scale miniature figures with video footage playing on a smartphone screen! Along the way, learn a bit more about this line of libations and the Moroccan tradition that inspired Kirin’s latest drink, “Sparkling Water.”
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