Plastic model maker, ramen lover: the obsessions of Japan's next PM

TOKYO - Shigeru Ishiba, the newly elected Liberal Democratic Party leader poised to become Japan's new prime minister, often appears in photos with a furrowed brow, but his expression immediately clears when he talks about one of his true loves - plastic models.

His office is stacked ceiling-high with books on politics and history, but the 67-year-old is often referred to in Japanese media as an "otaku", or someone obsessive about the mundane. In his case, trains, plastic miniature models, and ramen noodles.

"It's like bringing a dream to reality," Ishiba said of the process of making plastic models in a TV interview during his brief stint as defence minister in 2007-2008.

He insists that the plastic figurines and models he adores and which fill the nooks and crannies of his office are also instrumental to his diplomacy.

He showed a plastic model of a United States P3 patrol plane when he met a US ambassador and stayed up all night assembling a Russian aircraft carrier when the Russian Minister of Defence visited Japan, according to an interview in 2017.

"Whenever an American ambassador, minister, or fleet commander comes to Japan, I find out what ship he was on and leave that (plastic model) with him. Then he would say, 'That's the ship I was on,' and it would make him really happy," he said in a separate interview with Abema Times.

Ishiba's passion also extends to trains - the full-size versions - which he has gushed about on his Instagram account.

He claims to have taken a sleeper train between Tokyo and his constituency in Tottori in western Japan more than 1,000 times.

[[nid:703334]]

"The super express! Their shining interior...and unprecedented style..." he said as he reminisced about the first time he got on the