Plarail Store near Narita Airport opens

Tomy announced on their website the grand opening of Toy Kingdom, beginning April 26. It is a large space in Chiba prefecture's Aeon Mall near Narita Airport. The space is divided into 4 themes: Tomica Shop satellite, Plarail Square, Licca Garden, and Pokemon Town (floorplan).


"Plarail Square" will be having their grand opening events between May 1 - 6 (just in time for Boys' Day)! Ahh, if we were anywhere near we'd go for a peek, guess we'll have to settle for it to be on the agenda the next time in Tokyo.

For those of you who won't be able to make it for Toy Kingdom's opening, come check out our Plarail selection at: namikazetoys.com

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Yellow Girders in ITALY??

I've been meaning to post these pictures for some time now. A couple of months ago we went on vacation to Italy. As we came out of the airport to catch a train into Rome we saw something that made us laugh a little bit and made us realize exactly how much we had Plarail on the brain. These are pictures are from the platform at Fiumicino Station in Rome.

Are those Yellow Bridge Legs!? J-14?!? J-22!!!



Rows and rows of double-width yellow bridge legs at Rome's Fiumicino station.

Anyone else out there with Plarail on the brain? E-mail us pictures with a description! We'll post them up here!

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The Chat Widget is BorkEN!

Some of you may notice the Digsby chat widget to the right stopped connecting. Some of you may scratch your heads and wonder what exactly I've been smoking. Well, the newest version of flash that was released about a week ago is the culprit here. If you've updated your Firefox, Internet Explorer, what have you to the newest version, the Widget will no longer connect. Sadly, it will remain this way until the fine folks at Digsby update their software.

If you need to contact us you have a couple options. The easiest option is to just email us at namikazetoys@gmail.com. Don't worry, we won't bite! The second way is to uninstall the latest version of flash and go back to the older version. For simplicity's sake it would probably be easier to just shoot us an email.

Until next time, keep on training!

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And We're Open!

It's been less than three months since we first got the idea in our heads to start importing and selling Japanese toys. To us, it felt like an eternity. Creating the concept, applying for the business, deciding on our products and talking to importers-- sometimes it felt like we were never going to get off the ground. Yet, a few months and a few gray hairs later, here we are. I am proud to formally announce that Namikaze Toys is now open for business and actively taking orders!

Our passion and our beginnings lie in Takara Tomy's wonderful Plarail toy train line and that's where we've decided to start our business. Plarail appeals to both young and old, is easy to setup and has stood the test of time being first introduced in 1959. We hope that you enjoy these products as much as we do and that you continue to stop by and see what else we have in store. We're just getting started!


Namikaze Toys
namikazetoys@gmail.com
http://www.namikazetoys.com
http://namikazetoys.blogspot.com

*edit* For those of you on Oahu, don't forget to head down to the Iolani School Fair and stop by and see our setup at the silent auction. The fair starts today, and the silent auction is being held in Seto Hall, just past the parking structure and before the baseball field. See you there!

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Design Examples

As I mentioned earlier today, we will be donating a number of rails to the 2008 Iolani Fair silent auction. The actual layout is shown below.

Behold, the PEANUT.














This setup consists of the following packs of rail:

• Two sets of elevating turn rails (R-18)
  
• Three sets of bridge legs (J-14)
• Four sets of inner turn rails (R-03)
• One battery powered train which just so happens to have Iolani colors.
  

All sets will be unopened, so while we are displaying this setup as an example, the winner of the bid is free to build any layout he or she pleases.

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Drowning in Plarail

Hi Folks!

Our first of hopefully many shipments to come just arrived yesterday afternoon and we are ecstatic. The last time we've seen so much Plarail all at once was-- actually, I can't even remember! We're drowning in the stuff now, with TOMY boxes full of Plarail piled high!

Of course, we had to "sample" a few for ourselves to verify quality and I can safely say, the stuff is EXCELLENT. We can't wait to get this stuff moving and into your hands. The store web page is coming along nicely and we hope to have most functionality up within a couple weeks. In the meantime, we're also looking at the possibility of selling on EBAY to get our name out there and spread the fun around to everyone who loves Plarail as much as we do.

One more thing of note-- we will be donating a preconfigured set to the silent auction at the 2008 Iolani School Fair on April 18 and 19. We'll have pictures of the layout that we're donating and it will contain multiple unopened packs of rail as well as a single battery powered train. Stay Tuned!

Namikaze Toys Staff

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