Packaging and content

It all comes in a nice little box. On the front is a picture of the Sakura and on the back is a paint guide listing Tamiya paints with two pictures of the finished model. Most of the writing is in Japanese. Inside you will find the instruction sheet and a clear plastic bag holding two sprues and a small sheet of decals. The kit has 65 parts and two flag decals.

Instructions

The instructions are a small sheet of paper folded to fit in the box. On the one side you will find a black and white version of the picture on the box and below is historical information on the ship typed in both English and Japanese.

On the back you will find the instructions for building the ship. They are broken down into five steps.

The first three show how to assemble the bridge, main gun, and machine gun platform. The other two steps show blown up diagrams of the ship and all its parts. These to steps appear a little cluttered but as long as you take your time there should be no problems.

Molding

The parts are well molded with a great amount of detail for their size. I did notice a few small dips in some of the large flat areas such as the sides of the main gun but these are rare and hardly noticeable. Also, a few small ejection marks can be found on a few of the pieces. This includes a few of the round parts of the masts and can be a bit difficult to fill and sand. I also noticed the hull was bowed slightly in my kit. Over all I found the details and molding to be very good even with the few imperfections.

Fit

The parts fit together very well on this kit. All the holes and pegs line up perfectly and the only puttying needed was where the bridge meets the hull.

Overall

Tamiya has done a nice job recreating the Sakura in 1/700 scale.