Japanese Billy dollhouse- Naniwa's Skewer (Kushi katsu) Shop

This is my first official Billy Dollhouse. The Billy Dollhouse Company in Japan makes ready-to-assemble dollhouses. The small kits sell for 3000 yen ($27.00 USD), and the larger kits retail for 5300 yen ($48.00 USD). They have a website and they sell online, but they do not sell directly to countries outside of Japan. Customers in the US can buy them from Amazon.Com, for about $10 above retail, which isn't too large a markup.

They're are very similar to the made-in-China DIY kits that I'd bought before. But in Japan, everything is more expensive, but generally, you get higher quality for the higher price. This kit cost me 5,300 yen ($48.00), which is about twice the cost of similar Chinese kits. It is called "ナニワの串カツ屋さん", which Google Translate says is "Naniwa's skewer/kushi katsu/kushi age shop". I had seen samples of the finished kits at Volks Akihabara, so I knew they are slightly smaller than 1:18, perhaps more like 1:20 or 1:24 scale.

Parts inventory after opening the kit

One thing that I wasn't very enthusiastic about was Billy's use of foamboard and cardboard sheets to make a few parts. You're supposed to cut out the parts yourself, using the full-sized templates in the instructions. Personally, I just don't like foam board because of painting issues and gluing issues. I refused to build furniture with cardboard, so I did part substitutions for this build.

The instructions are completely in Japanese, with zero English. Since I'd done these kinds of dollhouses before, I made educated guesses about how to assemble it by looking at the diagrams, as well as watching YouTube videos by the user HMS2.

Since this dollhouse shop is sub-1:18 scale, my plan was to modify it to bring it into proper 1:18 by using 1/4" x 3/4" x 8" basswood strips to boost the height of the walls. The back panel of the shop needed to be replaced, so I used a thin MDF backer board from a Daiso picture frame.

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Day 7: 

Here's an in-progress shot of the Billy DIY dollhouse project. This photo shows how to increase the height of a wooden dollhouse in order to bring it in-scale with larger figures, in this case going from 1:20/1:24 scale to 1:18.

Day 7 of dollhouse construction

Clockwise from the top:

1. Main building: The 3/4" basswood strips can be seen on the outside. On the inside, the booster strips had already been covered-up with a wide baseboard, which is a textured paper strip. The outside will eventually be covered up with siding.
2. Doors: Since the building height is being increased, the doors also need to be taller. There's a 1/2" basswood strip on the bottom of the door. Once the door is painted, the booster will not be visible.
3. "L" shaped counter: The instructions called for cutting the countertop from foamboard and the cabinet from cardboard. I completely replaced all of it with a hand-cut basswood countertop and very thin leftover MDF from a picture frame backing board.
4. Small outdoor counter: Also has a 1/2" basswood strip to boost the height. The outside is covered with a strip of bamboo mat, replacing the flattened corrugated cardboard strip mentioned in the instructions.
5. The original stools actually fit Rement Pose skeletons pretty well. I decided to designate them as "kid's stools". Then I made 4 slightly larger ones from scratch (same style) for the "grownups". I found some excellent "textured cloth" origami paper at Daiso, so I used that to replace the original paper chair covering.
6. The yatai (street food stall) cabinet also needed a height boost to make it proportional to the new height of the building and furniture. I added a 1/2" basswood strip, and replaced the intended cardboard counter with thin MDF. All of the changes will be invisible once the cabinet is painted.

The Billy dollhouse kit includes 3 small bottles of paint. After trying them out, I'll say that the paint is definitely unlike the craft acrylic paints that we have in the US. The Billy paints are water based, but they are semi-transparent, semi-gloss, really quick-drying and have a lot more "stick" to them. They adhere to the surfaces very well- almost too well, because it was difficult to wash the dried paint off of my hands! I had to use a pot scrubbing sponge.

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Day 15: 

Well, the Billy dollhouse is still a work-in-progress. I've completed the building, interior furniture and the yatai (street food) cart, as well as the small outdoor counter. Everything's painted and nicely covering up all of the height booster strips.

Day 15 of dollhouse construction

Yup, bringing the scale to 1:18 was a good idea. Here's what it looks like with figures: Boss Fight Studio skeleton, Pose skeleton, and manning the yatai- a "125mm full-action Kamen Rider SAGA Kuuga" gachapon figure, fresh from Japan. The samurai armor suit is another gachapon capsule toy.

But there's NO FOOD! I'll be working on that over the next few days. I know, a restaurant looks kind of pitiful with hungry customers and no food.

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Day 21: 

We have food now! and BEER! The food is made in the most unexpected way: cutting tiny pieces out of foam board and putting a thin wire through them. Then painting them with the included high-tack orange paint. Then coating them with glue and rolling them around in sand. And a final coat of orange paint. They really do look good enough to eat.

Day 21 of dollhouse construction

I'm approaching the completion of the dollhouse kit. Right now, the awning is only taped-on because I'm waiting for some LED lights from China. Eventually I'll have light-up lanterns under the awning.

Additional part substitutions:

1. The flags and curtains were originally printed paper. I scanned the paper sheets, printed them on iron-on paper and ironed them on cloth. Cloth has far superior function and aesthetic.
2. The beer mugs were supposed to be cut from flexible aquarium tubing. But, the resulting mugs would be seriously out of scale, and the material is difficult to glue. I replaced them with mugs cut from a BIC pen and some wire for the handles. 
3. The instructions called for food trays to be flat cardboard rectangles covered with foil, with the food placed on top. For practical reasons, that design wouldn't work in real life because the excess oil would just flow onto the countertops. I replaced them with proper food trays with fold-up sides, cut from silver-colored cardstock.
4. I used heavy textured tan cardstock to make the chopstick cups 
5. Things were getting crowded on the base, so I increased the size of the base by 3/4" by gluing on basswood strips. This would be covered up by the paving stones, eventually.

The sidewalk is next on my list to do.

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Day 29: COMPLETION! 

I'm done! This project took 4 weeks. I could have done this faster if I stuck to the instructions and made it exactly as-is, but it was always my intention to increase the size to 1:18 scale, and to do a deluxe version of the kit.

This pic is taken from the side, and shows the following improvements:

1. Paving stones made from egg cartons, trimmed, painted, sealed with clearcoat and grouted with spackling paste.
2. Added a samurai armor gachapon. I found this in a gacha machine at Yodobashi Akiba, on the same night that I bought this dollhouse kit at Volks Hobby Paradise Akihabara. I initially wasn't sure what to do with it, but when I did a dry fit of it next to the kushi katsu shop, something clicked and I liked the look.
3. Created a bamboo pot for the plant. The instructions were vague about what to do with the plant. Was I supposed to drill a hole in the base and just stick it in? I had leftover bamboo from a bamboo mat used in an earlier project, so I made a pot by wrapping heavy paper around a marker to make a cylinder, and then wrapping a strip of bamboo mat around it.
4. Made Japanese paper lanterns instead of using styrofoam balls.

Day 29 completion of dollhouse construction

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WHEN THE LIGHTS GO DOWN IN THE CITY

It took 25 days for my LED lights to arrive from China. A dozen of them cost only 11 cents (US). The time spent waiting wasn't wasted. I was working on some lanterns, because, dammit, I wanted the lanterns to light up. The original instructions and materials intended for them to be made from styrofoam balls covered with paper, but if I made them that way, I would not be able to insert LED bulbs inside.

So, I ended up making them old-school style: by winding cloth-covered floral wire around a marker and shaping to coils by hand to taper at the ends. Then I covered them in Japanese washi paper. I added a small wire handle at the top, so I could hang them from hooks on the roof.

I wired the LEDs in parallel. They were 3v each, at 20mAh. Since there's 5 of them wired in parallel, they could all run on a single CR-2032 battery, and I had several battery boxes in my stash. It technically works, but a load of 5 LEDS is a bit much for a single coin cell, so I'm expecting the lights to run down the battery pretty quickly.

Kushi Katsu shop illuminated at night with lanterns

Lighted dollhouses look entirely different at night. The photo here is actually a pretty good replica of what it's really like to stop at a kushi katsu shop at night. The Japan I saw (Tokyo) is all skyscrapers, multi-floor mega shopping complexes, bright lights, traffic jams and trains. These kinds of traditional shops still exist in places like Shibamata and Osaka. I love Japan! Maybe on my next trip, I'll venture beyond Tokyo.

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FINAL EVALUATION OF BILLY DOLLHOUSE KIT

Now that I've completed my first Japanese Billy dollhouse kit, I can make an objective evaluation of them.

They're rather expensive for what you get. This kit is one of their largest and most expensive ones at 5300 yen. Although the MDF was measured and cut very precisely and finished very well, the Billy dollhouse company seems to have an aversion to making smaller parts out of wood. Many parts, such as countertops and cabinets were supposed to be cut from foam board or cardboard. The roof pieces were supposed to simply be glued at an angle, when they should have wooden triangle-shaped supports. And items that should be cloth are printed paper. I did an awful lot of part substitutions.

The kit did not come with any light bulbs and was never intended to light up. I fixed that (of course) and kicked in about $10 for additional materials (wood, MDF, various types of paper, cloth, Plastruct rails, floral wire, lights).

Manufacturer's photo (left) vs actual dollhouse. A good match

Since I was on vacation in a foreign country and very determined to spend money, that justified the purchase. It's a souvenir of Japan, with some cultural and historical significance, as well as a hobby kit. This was a fun and interesting project, and now it looks like it came from a $48.00 kit. But in its original form... maybe not. I am not certain if I would purchase another Billy dollhouse kit. The materials are rather basic, and I believe I can construct a similar dollhouse from scratch for a fraction of the cost.

Sometimes I really think that toy skeletons have a better life than I do

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