My Custom Not Lego Japanese Machiya House

 

Hello brick fans!  I recently made a Japanese style Machiya style house made from not Lego.  It's a continuation of my Japanese building series that I've been obsessed with lately.  

It started with the Japanese Crab/Seafood restaurant, followed by my custom Fujiwara Tofu shop.  Also in my collection are the trio of Cada brand Japanese shops designed by exesandbox.

You can find all my reviews for those buildings by the using the term "japanese style" in the search box of my blog.

The machiya house sits on a raised 16x32 stud baseplate and is two storeys tall.

In case you're not familiar with Japanese architecture, a machiya is a traditional townhouse with a narrow frontage, with earthen walls and baked tile roofs.

The front of the machiya traditionally served as a retail space with sliding or rolling shutters that could be opened to display goods and wares.  See the wikipedia entry for machiya if you'd like to learn more about this topic.

I looked at a lot of pictures of Japanese shops and machiyas so I tried to replicate some of the key design elements for my modular building.

I chose natural earth tones such as gray and brown for the machiya.  The black accents and highlights gives the building a modern vibe.  There is a takoyaki shop on the main floor.  I plan to add a kitchen and for the second floor, living quarters later on.  

I'll provide more details about the takoyaki shop a bit later.

Just like the inside, the rear of the building is still a work in progress.  I'm thinking about relocating the back door to the right hand side to put it under the stairs.

I might also refine the roof structure a bit, but it's sturdy enough and provides a decent looking slope, so I dunno, maybe, maybe not.

In modular form, the rooftop, second floor and first floor are easily accessible.  I have installed a staircase to the second floor but as mentioned earlier the interior is empty at the moment.

Here is the Takoyaki shop.  The front door has a very contemporary look with the wooden slats.  It provides access to the inside of the shop and also to the second floor via the stairs.  I put a small planter and a frog statue on either side of the doorway.  The fabric banner attaches to the underside of the awning.

In lieu of regular windows like in all of my other modular buildings, I used a rollup garage door for the front of the shop.

I bought the roll-up doors from Aliexpress.  They come with all the hinged door panels as well as the tracks on either side so that they can be opened or closed.

If I ever finish the interior, I'll put some minifigures behind the shop counter.   When the shop is closed the takoyaki would be moved inside.  There's room on the counter to  install a display case.

Most of the signage is stickers with the exception of the fabric banner and they all come from the small Sembo Takoyaki stall building set 601065 that I bought back in March 2020.  Even the takoyaki are stickers.

I took the set apart a couple of years ago, but luckily I still had the banner and stickers.  Here's my original Sembo Takoyaki set review.

I replicated the upper window design from the Fujiwara tofu shop but put blinds in the windows instead of glass.  The wooden slats on the right side of the second floor serve to protect the fan/ventilation unit.  I wanted to keep the sidewalk more open so I put the takoyaki sign on the wall of the second floor.

Here's the new machiya building next to the Fujiwara tofu shop on my ever growing Japanese street.

Let me know what you think of my latest creation, thanks for looking!  Bye!

Review of the Cada Japanese Tea Shop C66010 Building block Set (not Lego)

Hello brick fans!  Welcome to the Cada C66010 Japanese Tea Shop!  That's the set we are reviewing today.  It's the third in a series of Japanese style buildings designed by Tong Xin Jun aka ExeSandBox.  The other two buildings in the series are:

Cada C66006 Japanese Steamed Bun Shop 

Cada C66007 Japanese Coffee Shop

If you loved those little buildings, you are most certainly going to want to include the Japanese Tea Shop to your collection.  The shop has 1200 pieces with full interiors within the two floors of the building.  

The exterior looks like a very authentic Japanese shop, complete with vending machine and little bonsai plants on the shop's doorstep.  There is a large utility pole right outside with transformer and street lamp.

Around back, one can view the interior of the shop by ingeniously sliding the whole back wall.  We will look at all of the interior details below.

Where to get it

Afobrick.com has all three of the Japanese inspired buildings on their website.  They have kindly provided today's set for me to review.

Feel free to check out their store, they have over 700 competitively priced building block sets, available in all sorts of themes. Free worldwide shipping for most orders.  Please use my discount code itsnotlego to save a further 5% off their already low prices.

The Set Details

• Brand: Cada
• Set: C66010 Japanese Tea Shop, designer: Tong Xin Jun
• Piece count: 1200pcs
• Numbered bags? Yes
• Stickers or printed parts? Stickers
• Missing or deformed pieces: No
• Extra parts: Yes
• Minifigures: No
• Lighting kit: included
• Brick Quality and Clutch: Excellent
• Measurements (approx): 
• Age Rating: ?+

Unboxing

The Cada Japanese Tea Shop arrived in a brown cardboard box from Afobrick.com. Inside were several bags of building blocks, two sticker sheets and two instruction booklets.  There are 57 pages on the first booklet and 115 pages on the second booklet.  I wonder why Cada just didn't print one booklet instead of two?  Same with the sticker sheets. They are small enough that they could have simply used one larger sheet of stickers.

Here's a closer look at the stickers, some with Japanese wording and the majority of them are for the canned drinks inside the vending machine.

Here's the breakdown of the bags for parts corresponding to each step of the build.

Step A consists of 6 bags

Step B consists of 6 bags

Step C consists of 5 bags

Also included are three individually wrapped transparent window pieces, a bag containing special parts for the utility pole, a bag containing the LED light string, and an assortment of baseplates.

The instruction manuals are well printed and easy to follow.  The last few pages of the second instruction manual features a complete visual parts list just like Lego manuals.

As you can see the building process has three different steps.  Step A builds the foundation and first floor of the tea shop.  Step B adds the second floor and sliding rear wall, and Step C builds the roof, and remaining accessories.  Let's dive in now!

Building Step A

The baseplate is 16 studs wide but shorter than the standard 32 stud depth of other Lego modular buildings.

Flipping it over, we see the structure of the base.  I would have much preferred that the tea shop was built on a regular 16x32 stud baseplate.  It would add so more space in the front and back of the shop.

I really like how storage was incorporated into the bottom of the staircase.  I need to do this more in my other MOC buildings.  The tea is stored in several containers and shelf drawers and fronted by a long counter.  For tea tasting there's a round table with two stools.

The front doors to the tea shop can be conveniently opened and closed by sliding each one.

Front awning installed.

You get one long LED light strip with USB plug included with the set.  You simply thread the wires around the interior of the building's first and second floor.  I used a battery pack from one of my Funwhole branded building sets to provide power for the lighting.

Building Step B

Here you can see that step B  completes the interior of the second floor.  It looks to be a tea tasting room that has a raised floor with tatami mats.  A low table and seats adron the room.  The lighting is a bit of a mess but it's been installed in the second floor.

On the front of the second floor, there is an air conditioner mounted next to the balcony.  On the other side of the balcony is some kind of utility box. It opens but there's nothing inside.  One can access the balcony from the inside via the sliding door.

The instructions for building the rear wall are split between the first and second instruction manuals.  It slides open as we will see later.  It's interesting how the designer uses the ladder piece for the rear window grill.

Building Step C

The roof is attached to the building through a series of clips.

With the roof attached, we test out how well the rear wall slides.  Pretty smooth!

The vending machine and utility pole really enhance the look of the set.  The dark blue roof tiles provide a nice contrast to the tan bricks walls.

I'm not sure why there is a rear notch in the baseplate.  I ended up removing the piece when I rebuilt the base.

Here are some of the leftover/extra pieces afterwards.

I think the Cada Japanese Tea shop is a very nice model.  Fit and finish of the bricks was excellent.  Too bad it doesn't come with any minifigures though.  I've added a few of my own for display purposes.  That little pink bike isn't included either, sorry!

The lights don't seem quite as bright as my other Cada sets, maybe my batteries are low in juice?

I'll probably see if I can replace the lighting with some from Lightailing/Briksmax in future.

Here is the Cada Japanese Tea shop pictured with the other two Japanese shops. They certainly make a nice little street scene altogether.

Also on Aliexpress, find it using the term Japanese Streetview.

I had a great time building this set, and it took me less than a day.  The only improvement to the set would be using a standard 16x32 baseplate, oh and add some minifigures!  I'm going to give this set 4.8 out of 5.  The look and the price of the Japanese Tea shop really beats out any similarly priced Lego set.  Highly recommend!

Thanks for looking, bye for now!

Modifications to my Cada C66010 Japanese Tea Shop Building Set (not Lego MOC)

Hey brick fans!  Here's a bonus post about my latest updates to the Cada C66010 Japanese Tea Shop.  You won't see this anywhere else on the web, so you are in for a treat!

In my previous review post of the Cada Japanese Tea Shop, I lamented that the set was not designed on a full baseplate. It's 16 studs wide but not the full 32 studs deep.  In the above picture you can see the original base plate configuration.  In order to fit in with rest of my not Lego city, I decided to make some improvements.

I found that with just a bit of effort, I could incorporate the existing structure onto a standard base plate and make it a MILS system to boot.

And while we're at it, let's make the tea shop a true Lego compatible modular building, so that the second floor can be easily removed from the first floor.

Here's a unique view of the tea shop's first floor interior.  You'll notice that I've removed the LED light string from the inside.  I have a goal of adding Briksmax style lighting in the future.

For both 1st and 2nd floors, I added some studded tiles to allow minifigures to be placed inside.

I didn't have to alter the structure of the second floor at all.

With the second floor removed, the first floor can be seen more clearly.  The sliding back wall still gets held in place.

Functionally nothing has been impacted by modularising the tea shop.  Here's the back wall in the open position.

And here is the back wall in the closed position.  With the expanded baseplate there's room out back to place more stuff.  Here I've just parked a bicycle next to the plants.

Here's the side view.  Oops, I forget to reattach the power line!

I might remove the legs from the A/C unit because they look like they are just hanging there.  Oh and I removed the vending machine because I felt that it detracted from the look of the building.  Why would you need a bottled or canned drink when you can have fresh brewed tea instead?

And while we're at it, why not stick that old sakura tree onto a MILS base plate as well.

Here's my other Cada shop modification posts:

Cada Japanese Steamed Bun Shop C66006 mods

Cada Japanese Summer Breeze Coffee Shop C66007 Mods

And here are my reviews of the original sets, designed by exesandbox:

Cada C66006 Japanese Steamed Bun Shop Set Review

Cada C66007 Japanese Summer Breeze Coffee Shop set review

Cada C66010 Japanese Tea Shop Set Review

Want this set?  Get it from Afobrick.com, and don't forget to get an extra 5% off using code itsnotlego.