We've had the great fortune of being befriended by a delightful lady who is the Japanese section manager of Sophia Books, a multi lingual-multimedia bookstore in Vancouver, BC Canada. Kiyoko Tibbets has become and remains a tremendous support and friend in supplying much information on the Japanese Temari books, and while Sophia does not have an online secure server, you can get in touch with Kiyoko in various ways to place an order. Kiyoko is a delight to communicate and work with. Knowing the difficulty of obtaining Japanese books here in North America and the US, Kiyoko has continued to provide lots of info with the request to share it here on TemariKai.  Click here for the current availability  and price list.  (to print a PDF file of the current listing, click here).
        Sophia Books is that wonderful kind of shop that I sure wish we still had around - rather than the standard mall or chain stores...

        Kiyoko offered to help any of us as needed. The inventory of Japanese Temari books varies of course depending on demand and the shipments from Japan. Also they have been getting more difficult to obtain, but Kiyoko has told us that since there appears to be such a growing interest and following of Temari in North American and Europe now, she is hoping that the Japanese published will do some more production runs of the Temari books (unfortunately it seems that Temari is still declining in interest in Japan). This connection with Kiyoko is one of the best ways to obtain any of the Japanese books - and purchasing from Sophia is quite easy even without the option of online ordering. You may contact Kiyoko at Sophia by email (info@sophiabooks.com) - be SURE to put Temari, Temari books or similar in the subject line to insure that it gets to Kiyoko.  Kiyoko will mail the books to you via Canadian Post....   book prices are standard publishers' list - but for anyone in the US the current exchange value on US versus Canadian dollars is very much in the US favor.

How to order directly from Sophia Books:
        We realize that it may be confusing on how to place an order with Sophia Books from outside of Canada - they do not have a toll free phone number for areas out of Canada or a secure server to place an online order. You do not have to go through a third party bookstore here in the US or other country to place an order - and infact if you do you may well incur additional markup charges at the local store you are requesting to place the order for you. Sophia is a regular retail store ready to serve you and ordering is safe and easy. Here is how:

• Either email info@sophiabooks.com or use postal mail (from the US to Canada for a handwritten note up to one ounce the postage is 60 cents US) Kiyoko Tibbets with your order information: the books you desire, your name, email, mailing address, payment information and phone number where you can be reached during normal business hours Pacific Standard Time.
• If ordering by email, it's best not to include your full credit card information in one email. The safer thing to do is to send part of the account number in one email and then the remainder with the expiration date in a second email. Or, you can fax your information to 604-684-1683.
• Your phone number is most important since if needed, Kiyoko will call you to confirm your order and to arrange payment.  Please be sure to address either form of note to the attention of Kiyoko - include either her name or the word TEMARI in the subject line of the email, or note an ATTN: Kiyoko/TEMARI on the lower left corner of the envelope if you send a postal note.
• Kiyoko will confirm your order by email (or a postal note if you are not email enabled). Whcih ever way you choose, Kiyoko much prefers to receive a written order from you either by email, mail or fax - this way there is much less chance of errors in spellings of names, etc.

        One sticky item that sometimes gets things garbled is the naming of the books - very often in conversation those of us on the list will "nickname" a book which of course does not have much meaning to anyone else - and the language barrier makes things tough to describe titles. Kiyoko advises to always identify the books you desire by the ISBN number... this is a univeral language in the book world and even most all of the Japanese books have them hidden in there somewhere.Kiyoko has however gone to the trouble of compiling a wonderful cross reference of Japanese books still in print.  The list is presented as a scanned image of her list as it also includes Kanji characters from the actual titles. A wonderful added bonus is Kiyoko included a summary list of the English adjectives used in the titles..... it is at the end of page two. My gratitude to her for her efforts for us!  

        You can find more information about all of the known Japanese Temari books on the Japanese Book Listing  - with thanks to Kiyoko for all of her help in providing information for this list.