i saw these beautiful images from higashine yasuhito on utsuwa-ka, and they made me think of modern bonsai in vintage containers. because it’s in japanese, i honestly could not quite figure out if it’s the beautiful work of a florist or a sculptural artist (or perhaps both), but regardless, these images of plantings in vintage containers and re-purposed boxes just made me feel so peaceful. utsuwa-ka is lovely concept store in japan, featuring exhibits of pottery, porcelain, Urushi/Japanese lacquer wares, and woodwork made by contemporary artists. translation, anyone?

muji carries a extremely affordable and wide variety of products with very simple, clean aesthetics, and aspires to modesty and plainness, the better to adapt and shape itself to the styles that appeal to as many people as possible. think ikea, with a japanese flair. here’s a glimpe at some of my favorites from muji.

gingham checked slippers ($13.95), cotton re-useable tote bag ($26.50), craft sketchbook ($4.25), and beechwood wall clock ($48.75).

clear stickies for marking your favorite spots ($3.50), reused yard scarf ($19.95), 36 colored pencils in kraft tube ($11.25), and really cute good fit red sneakers ($26.50).

beech jewelry tree, ($16.75), tin box with lid ($20.95), pinewood folding table ($82.50), and aluminum business card case ($5.50).

square mahogany wood tray ($11.50), wool jersey bag ($19.25), cozy wool checked blanket ($24.98), and city in a bag, paris ($14.00).

i love paumes books, even though i can rarely read a word of them. the photographs speak volumes, though, so a pretty picture book is never a waste of inspiration. paumes is a small, family-run Japanese publisher, working in close contact with artists and designers all over the world to bring you these beautiful books featuring designers’ homes, apartments, studios and ateliers.

the lovely yvonne from yvestown blog is a distributor for paumes, so you can easily order these books directly from her website. she recently sent me this beautiful new paumes, called ‘appartements de filles à paris‘ which is the sequel to the well-received book ‘Petits appartements à Paris‘. the new books are so popular, they hard to keep in stock, but if you don’t mind a short wait, you’ll find the wait well worth it, and plenty of older titles are readily available in the yvestown shop! thanks yvonne!

Update: Thanks to reader Yuko for finding this working website for Salvia. This books covers Yurio’s designs, career and portfolio of beautiful and really inspiring work, and is simply called Yurio Seki Japanese Graphic Designer, and you can find it here at Pie Books, but here’s a little peek.

Paris Brocante is also written in Japanese, so I can’t read it, but I do like to look at all those many pretty pictures. Fortunately, the shop names and addresses are all listed, so should lucky you be making the trip to Paris soon, you will be able to locate the over 45 shops and markets listed in the book. I’ve listed the Paumes ISBN number below should you like to find and order Paris Brocante online.

ISBN978-4-07-260400-7.

It’s a beautiful mook of a very soothing Japanese home with lots of natural woods, lots of fresh white and simple, well designed (and space saving) rooms. You can find mooks in most Japanese books stores like Kinokuniya, who has book shops in San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Costa Mesa, and New York, as well as many overseas locations in Asia and Australia. You can also order these mooks online, and Kinokuniya has recently introduced a new English interface for order-checkout. Here’s a look a few snaps I took of this mook’s pretty and inspiring pages. Of course, I couldn’t just grab one, so more on mooks later this week.

*You can locate this mook online via the ISBN# 978−4-594-60571-1.

Helen says they look like mini posters and she’d like to enlarge them and hang them – I would have to agree! They would look beautiful in a grouping on a wall. For more of Helen’s inspiring finds, visit Orange You Lucky!, or visit her online portfolio, One Lucky Helen, to see her fantastic illustrations.

Hello, I’m Suzanne Shade, a friend of Victoria’s from San Francisco. I run the Beholder, so you may remember me from her posts on affordable art. She’s asked a few folks to guest blog for her this week, and I was thrilled to take part.

I’m having my first baby in September, so I’ve been doing all the new mommy things… stressing over what color to pain the baby’s room and all of that fun stuff. Since this is all new to me, I’ve needed to find some different sources of inspiration than the usual Domino mag and my blog standbys (sfgirl, of course!)

Most things ‘American Baby’ kind of gross me out, so I remembered a series of books I saw in Japantown here in SF that had Japanese features on European style — I love all of that Euro stuff, so to see it through Japanese eyes makes these books even cooler. The one I chose is from Paris, called Chez les Parisiens. Oh, so casually chic!

After the Kinokuniya Bookstore, I got inspired to go to the neighborhood dollar store to see if their were some cheap baby goodies. The great thing about the Japanese is that even the adult stuff is adorable (where else do you see happy faces on dish scrubbers?).

I love how Aya shows us some fresh new ideas for using origami papers, much more than their intended, original use. Aya asked, “Did you know back when we didn’t have the technology to print patterns directly onto whatever we desire, Japanese people used a type of figured rice paper called Chiyogami to decorate small objects?” I’m keen to read more! We can pre-order the new Craft Pad today from Chronicle Books. In the meantime, I’m looking around the pad to see what I might cover with some pretty origami papers…

If there isn’t a Kinokuniya book shop near you, you can also find Japanese books and mooks online at Pie Books , and Paumes as well as on eBay. It sometimes takes some searching, but so well worth the hunt. I picked up three small mooks, Stockholm’s Ateliers, Lotta Jansdotter’s Handmade Project and Stockholm’s Love Apartments, as well as a couple of larger mooks, one of designs from Cath Kidston and another I have no idea how translate for you (see photo below). Here’s a small glimpse of of those two first.

Editor’s note: Holly from Decor8 just emailed me this great link to ordering Japanese books from Paumes – you can learn more here. And here are the ISBN #’s you need to order:
Handmade Project: ISBN978-4-579-11148-0
Stockholm’s Love Apartments: ISBN978-4-07-259330-1
Stockholm Ateliers: ISBN978-4-07-258158-2
Cath Kidston: ISBN978-4-7966-5937-6
‘Mystery’ Mook: ISBN978-4-87303-545-1