How to get ahold of those Japanese Sewing Books

I'm not even sure if this is something people worry about, but I can tell you that I spent an inordinate amount of time searching around for Japanese Sewing books here in NZ before realising that my only option was to order online. Then I spent an inordinate amount of time researching that! I don't like to just click and order, I need to agonise over something for ages and find out every single option, ignoring the law of diminishing returns, until I nearly collapse from the sheer volume of information. You should have seen me ordering a few bits of wool felt last month!

In the end I got mine from Yes Asia as they had the cheapest prices by far (free shipping!) - although as I discovered that's because they're as slow as a wet week in getting it to you! But they did come after a month or so, and really for those prices it was worth it. The site comes up regularly as a good place to buy them so it's not a fly-by-nighter by any means. As an English-speaker it's not the easiest site to navigate, although I notice that in the year since I got my books it's become heaps better. For craft books the categories you want are

Books in Japanese » Hobby/ Lifestyle/ Culture » Lifestyle » Home Arts. The direct link is here. Please note that this is the global site, if you want shipping to North America only then you want this link here. The books are listed by publication date (generally). I found the easiest way to find them was to look on other sites for books people have reviewed or provided photos of pages, and then go looking for them on Yes Asia because you can't look inside and they don't provide reviews of the books - in English anyways. You can do a Google search, check out Etsy sellers, or visit sites like Crafting Japanese, Angry Chicken, or Molly Chicken. Crafting Japanese has a big long list of lots of blogs who mention these books.

Damn, now I want to order some more books! How about this one - imagine the amount of time I'd need to waste before committing to buying a book that was both a Japanese craft book AND about wool felt? Welcome to the Felt Bakery