26 May, 2009

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


5 comments:

  1. Funny that you wrote this as I've spent the last few days trying to figure out how/where to buy Japanese sewing books!
    Thanks so much.

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  2. No coincidence at all Robyn, it was your question about the book I gave away that made me start thinking about it! Great excuse to go looking at Yes Asia again too, I banned myself from there awhile ago :)

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  3. I posted a tutorial on my site about buying from amazon japan.

    Let me know if you want to swap jaffas and marmite for craft books. I mean it really, we can't get either of those things here in Osaka.

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  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  5. Hi-just wandered on to your site. This guy is on ebay (US) and he is an excellent source for japanese books and is wonderful to work with. Not sure about how much more international would be. Like your site!

    Seller:
    rose.tree [contact seller]
    Seller Information:
    Esra Coskun
    Durham, NC 27705 United States

    ReplyDelete

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