Japanese Christmas Layouts

[ATShinkansen]

Has anyone here ever done a temporary Japanese-style Christmas village-type layout for the holidays?  I’ve done them with American and European HO and 3-rail O gauge, but I’ve entertained the idea of doing something with the same theme, but in Japanese N scale.  Even something as simple as a Kato V13 with a couple Shinkansen around the tree sounds appealing (I was going to do that, but my V13 has already been integrated into the year-round layout).  I imagine such an endeavor would require quite a bit of creativity to come up with structures that fit both the “Japanese” and “winter/Christmas” criteria (and still be relatively to scale).

[katoftw]

Winter Illumination layout.

 

1. Get a Japanese layout.

 

2. Cover it in snow.

 

3. Cover in coloured LEDs. No just reds, whites and greens. All colours!

 

4. (Optional) Put a Christmas tree in a courtyard somewhere.

Edited December 3, 2022 by katoftw

[Sean]

Christmas is a thing here, though its mainly a secular, commercial occassion that is way different from in the West. The biggest pain is that it isn’t a holiday here so, even though I try to celebrate it in my home the same way a Canadian family would, my kids have to go to school and I have to go to work. Fortunately this year it falls on a weekend so its not an issue, but Christmas 2023 is going to be difficult.

You could definitely do a Christmas themed layout though, especially if you have an urban layout. The downtowns of major cities usually have extensive light displays which are quite amazing. I don’t know about adding snow, outside of the north most of Japan doesn’t get any at Christmas time.

 

This is a little mini diorama someone is selling with a Christmas theme

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/n1073893941 

[cteno4]

Three letters, KFC!

 

I’ve seen tons of xmas displays in japan, similar commercial xmas as here in the us. They even gave their xmas tree display in one mall a very Japanese theme!

 

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/sci/godzilla-christmas-tree-breathes-fire-tokyo-shoppers.html

 

i saw a neat little lit xmas tree made by a fiber optic xmas decoration that has like 8 different flashing colors out the plastic fiber optic strands. The person pulled the bundle up thru the baseboard and then heated the strands to bend them over at various heights and inna 360 then trimmed these all back into a cone shape. Then green flocked it all and splashed with some silver, red and gold micro beads and finally some silver thread for garland draped around. It was fantastic looking and about 15’ tall.

 

one of the Kato module contestants had a really nice winter office building scene with a large lit xmas tree in the little plaza in front of the building. Nice light snow scene. 
 

cheers

 

jeff