A birthday present

This one is written well in advance, but it seemed too good to pass up - a little birthday present for my brother.

Guess what I found in the bottom of a shopping centre?

As I'm sure my brother can tell you, this is a D51 class 2-8-2 locomotive, as built by Japan National Railways until 1945. Or rather, it's a full-sized model built entirely out of cardboard boxes.

A video on this page shows the assembly process: from Asahi news. The project is apparently the brainchild of Nagasaki artist Shima Hideo (島英雄).

I've included the display boards for interest, but haven't yet had the energy to try and translate them... sorry!

Anyway, I thought this might be interesting to a few people, and wanted to include it. It was an interesting early experience soon after I arrived; for I while I wasn't sure whether it was standard practice in Japanese department stores. Alas, no.