Vanpla OOTB Gundam Contest

Now that the competition is over, here are some photos for you guys to snack on. Even though I didn't win, I learned a lot from this experience. Vanpla's first competition and we managed to round up around 30 participants. Now too shabby. >: )

Second Place by a friend of mine.

Gaplant Dio Update and Bawoo Pre-Build

Sorry for the long hiatus to those who actually read this blog. These last few semesters are gonna be tough as I'm trying to get through graduating high school. A bunch of problems with me not passing certain courses. Hopefully I'll be able to settle everything by the end of June, so please anticipate more posts after that.

Hobby Shops in Sapporo

While I was staying in Sapporo, I did go around looking for models. I obtained my HGUC GM and GM Command Space Type from Yodobashi Camera. The store is located right next to the main transit station "Sapporo Station". This station is a terminal for the subway and the train systems and is basically considered the centre of the city. Stupid me didn't take pictures of the inside of the store, so I will try to explain it to the best of my ability.

Back Home

Hello, I just got back home here in Vancouver. Having 2 days without sleep because of travel really put a lot of stress on me. To be truthful, I didn't want to come home at all. I wished I could stay in Japan just a little longer. Imagine my surprise when I came home after 2 months of heaven to the image above....

 I didn't start screaming until after my dad left for work. >__>

Anyways, I'm still suffering from some horrible jet lag. In fact, I just woke up and it's 7pm.
I've been prepping up some supplies so I can finally do the Zaku's photoshoot. I will continue to make a few more posts about my exchange to Japan with more details for those who wish to one day go.

Host Changes

I just got my third host change. As an exchange student I have to live under someone else`s roof. These people are completely volunteering to pay for my transport and food expenses. Sometimes I don`t get along with them and that causes me to have to move. Quite frankly I`ve tried to get along with them as best I could.

My first host parents were ok, though they had a son who partied, smoked and brought his girlfriend all the time to do the do. They dad was never around and I could never get any sleep. As a result, I found myself sleeping in class all the time and my teacher`s got pretty pissed. The host father went down to Sendai in order to organize water filtration so the mom got pretty stressed. There were my host nephews who were pretty fun to hang around. They were 11 and 13 years old. The day before we left, we had a dinner on a yacht styled like a traditional Japanese tatami courtroom.

Second host parents were kinda weird. The dad was always chill, though I would only see him at night for a few hours. The mom however is slightly insane. She was a clean freak who enforced very strict rules on me. Apparently, she has a reputation among the host parents as the other exchange students told me that their host parents knew about her. She appeared pretty nice and even a bit childish at first, but soon enough she showed her real self. I`m wondering if she has a split personality or something as she will be super nice one moment and then pure evil the next.

I broke one too many a rule and she proceeded to swiftly kick me out.

My current and hopefully last host family are pretty amazing. The dad used to work at the Hokkaido Television Broadcasting company, though he retired this year. Right now he`s a volunteer organizer for the Sapporo branch of AFS, my exchange company. He and I share dirty jokes all the time and the mom teaches me how to pick up girls.

All in all, I`ve moved from the suburbs to a downtown area and finally I`m up in the mountain outskirts of Sapporo. Currently, I`m writing this from my host father`s laptop as they don`t know the network password so I can`t use my own computer. Later today is the Toyohira River Fireworks Competition and I`ll be going in a yukata(summer kimono). I`ll be going home next week so I will be able to upload photos and the two people who actually read this blog can see my girly face.

I`m in Japan

So I`ve been in Sapporo, Japan for 3 weeks and I haven`t been able to get on the internet to post anything here. This post will be the first a series for my life in Japan. I`m currently writing this from my school as I have only limited internet access at home. I came here as an exchange student to experience more of Japanese culture and to test out how fluent I am at Japanese.  It turns out that I can carry on a pretty bad conversation for a few minutes at least without having to resort to using a dictionary. I came through an exchange company called "AFS" and I`ll be staying until August 3rd so don`t expect any gunpla posts except maybe a few prebuilds of models that I may buy here. I`m currently living with a host family with a noisy host brother and I`ve been attending a private school here called "Ritsumeikan Keisho" junior and senior highschool. I"ll write a more detailed post on the school later. Since I`ve finally learned how to use the school computers here after a week, please expect more posts in the coming weeks.

I'm Back

Just to confirm that I am still alive and have been working on some models. The Zaku III I completed and submitted earliar is still in the shop and I have not gotten it back yet. Seems something went wrong at the group hosting the contest so I think I'm going to go get it back sometime this week and take some better photos. I've made some prebuild for a few models, but for my next project I think I'm going to finish making the Dirfinge and have it in a diorama. Expect some more posts around this week. Anyways, to make up for the lack of posts you can look at these dioramas that I found in a store in Seattle's Japan Town.

Zaku III WIP 2

Well, it's been around a month since my last post and I've managed to get some progress on this guy. All the seam lines have been or are in the finishing processes of being removed. I've stared re-sculpting some parts and am about 70% complete minus the paint. Recently, I purchased my first scriber so we'll see how much I can do with that. Hopefully, I won't make a disastrous mistake when scribing panel lines. I will now have to go into overdrive and finish this model quickly as I'm making this for a gunpla competition hosted by the mecha model club Vanpla. The due date is March and the theme is the zaku. You can see all our work and works in progress here: http://vanplaforum.com/index.php.