So I know I'm a bit late on the bandwagon, but I just recently discovered the awesomeness of Japanese craft books! I visited my local Kinokuniya bookstore last week and was completely overwhelmed at the vast amazing world of these gorgeous books, with subjects ranging from sewing to knitting/crochet to felting to embroidery to beading, and on and on. All with beautiful photography and design, even without the ability to read the instructions, I wanted to take every book home with me!

Well now you're probably asking, "If I can't read the instructions, are the books only good for looking pretty, or is there an actual use?" While I wouldn't recommend trying to use a Japanese book to learn a new craft/technique from scratch, you can definitely get some quality craft how-to info from most of these books. Great diagrams, detailed illustrations, and fold-out patterns make it easy to figure out what's going on. 

And hey, look, there's a huge online Japanese craft book community!! Tons of people out there are posting photos of their projects from the books, interpretations of instructions, and detailed reviews for online shopping help.

Speaking of shopping, now that I've gotten you intrigued I should probably tell you where to find them... If you're not lucky enough to live near a real life bookstore (Kinokuniya has locations in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland - Beaverton actually, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Costa Mesa, CA), check out the list of online bookstores on the ultimate Japanese craft books website, Crafting Japanese.

For some more info and fun browsing, check out the craftypod podcast episode all about the books, and the brand new website Japan Craft Journal. And I'm sure there are many more great sites out there that I don't know about yet - I'm new to this fantastic world!

(Books pictured are ISBN4579109856 and ISBN4579111273 and the folded out pattern is from the book I bought, ISBN9784579111657.)