I was wondering down the hobby shop the other day, and something got me thinking… They have loads of Japanese reference books on the shelves, and Japanese catalogs, magazines…and they are expensive, like all Japanese things are.
But I can understand if we buy a Japanese kit, but why would anyone (unless you know Japanese) spend 40 bucks and buy a book you can’t understand?
Do anyone ever buy those?
I would buy a Japanese language magizine for a great photo spread. Photography is a universal language and I can always use good reference photos.[:)]
I do the same with Polish or Czech books… Thanksfully, more often than ever now, they come with some English text, which gives me better value for my money, I think.
I wouldn’t bother, with a well written article I can make a picture in my mind but with a picture of a turret with no words I don’t know if it’s about the barrel, mantle, or cupola.
Makes it pretty pointless considering I could probably buy a “correct” turret for less.
I’m one of the lucky ones. My wife is Japanese, so I have her read it to me as I have a fair knowledge of spoken Japanese[:D].
Ive seen them…picked em up looked at the photos and pictures and pretty much threw them back on the shelf…just not the same without text!
Hey, whatever happened to a picture being worth a thousand words?[;)]
Long before I could read, write, or speak Japanese, I loved to get those ref and modeling books and magazines simply to look at the beautiful photography within.
For a hobby based mainly on the visual, I’d think images would come before words in our priority of preferred references. I’d much rather see something in a photograph than just read about it. Of course, we all want to know what we’re looking at, but that can always be investigated later.
I guess this particular angle is more geared towards looking at the beautiful model photography in foreign language magazines. Just the other day I bought a French magazine featuring amazing pictures, and although I understand very little French, I have enjoyed that magazine greatly.
I would have to admit that books of a more technical nature
might not interest me much if the text was in a language I didn’t understand at all![D)]
Here at work, our Books Dept. recently set out a bunch of old books they didn’t want to keep anymore. There was a stack of magazines titled Todo Modelismo (I’m going from memory at the moment). They are in Spanish, but the pictures were magnificent. There were two special issues which appeared to be about figures. Although I couldn’t read it, the pictures were amazing. So of course I picked up the entire stack. [:)]
The books were free (except it’s another stack of books taking up space) so it wasn’t a hard decision to make. Had I seen them in a store, probably not – although the two special figure issues would have had me thinking.
They’ll be great reference material. I figure I can always take it as an opportunity to expand upon the little bit of Spanish I know. What I don’t know, I can lookup on the Internet. [;)]
It is the same of stocking up with kits that you will never built…lol
I bought a rather pricey book called Star Trek Mechanics #4 as a reference for, well, Star Trek models. The photos are invaluable, but it would be nice to know what the captions are(in Japanese).