Torii arrives

Well, with the Christmas mail delays sorted my Torii arrived from Miniature Park in Tokyo this morning, and what a lovely, simple model it is.
Whereas the Verlinden version has vague location points the Japanese model has very clear pin and socket locations, and more importantly it actually fits together without masses of sanding and shaping.

It is moulded in a light grey resin which is extremely light, and comes in a simple zip-lock bag with a header card showing the painted model.

Here are some photos of the model built up.

This one shows the size of the model compared to a 1/35 Mini-Art man.  I would say that this is roughly the size of the Torii you would find either on a path leading to a shrine, or to a small temple.  As you can see it does look 'right'... true design and just looks like a Torii should look.

Here is the Torii compared to the Verlinden item, which I have now taken apart and put away to use as something else at a later date.  It just looks so... bland and uninteresting, certainly doesn't look like an authentic Japanese Torii.

 While looking at it I thought about other scales.  It is meant for 1/32 and 1/35 figures and dioramas, but how would it look with, say, a 1/64 Taxi?  It works perfectly with this scale, is the answer.  And using 1/80 people, vehicles and buildings it would look even bigger.  One model, so many uses.

 In addition to the Torii I also received a model for my non-Japanese cars in the form off a European or UK rural village road with what is called a barn, but could be anything.

The building and cobblestone road section are vac-form plastic while the details are normal injection moulded plastic.  I have a few of these kits by Mini-Art, a company from the Ukraine.  They seem to have mastered the techniques as the parts are very detailed and fit together well.
As with any vac-form kit there is a lot of prep needed, but to be honest the parts are so well engineered that this isn't too much of a chore.
The injection moulded parts show a fair bit of flash in places, but can be easily cleaned up.