At the Toronto Anime North convention in 2022, I discovered nanoblock, the micro-sized building blocks made by a Japanese company called Kawada. They are small enough to be fiddly and unstable but give you tremendous satisfaction when you assemble them into a more concrete whole.

I was slightly taken aback by the prices – most sets are around fifteen Canadian dollary-doos. Remember that I am taken aback by any price that is not zero – after all, I am Indian. I bought two at the nanoblock store in Tokyo Skytree – admittedly, not the cheapest location.

One set was a model of the E233 trainset developed by Japanese train company JR East. The model I have is blue, to match the colours of the Keihin–Tōhoku line in Tokyo.

I decided to capture the building process in a time-lapse video. My YouTube game is weak, hence why there are few edits and the thumbnail is vertical. Both unforgivable errors. Straight to jail.

A second model that W purchased for me was of the N700 Shinkansen. Another timelapse video is below. The interesting aspect of these designs is that you can combine individual models into a train set. I love that!