Tokyo yarn p*rn

Michael is overseas in Tokyo at the moment, and today I received a series of ten e-mails from him which were just jam packed with photos of yarn and knitting needles which were taken at a store near where he is staying. It took over an hour and a half for the e-mails to download over my poor, overworked dial-up connection, but it was so worth it! :)

For the most part, I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at, but everything is just so stunning and gorgeous, and in so many beautiful colours! Even though Michael only took photos of things he thought were likely to be Japanese, and not obviously European or Australian imports, there's 50+ photos all up and it really is total visual overload. :) I was about to upload the photos here to share, when, fortunately for everyone, I realized the complete and utter insanity doing that would be. So as a more practical alternative I've uploaded them to Flickr!, collected together as 'Tokyo yarn store' to make them a bit easier to find. I'd really love to have seen Michael taking all these photos though, as he says he took them 'ninja style'.

Now I just need to choose a favourite out of all of that yarn -- Can you feel my pain? ;) If anyone should happen to recognize something in the photos that they can recommend, do please let me know as I'm going to need all the help I can get to make this decision.

In the meantime, does anyone know anything about Japanese knitting needles? For instance, are the Japanese sizes of the Clover bamboo needles the store had available in abundance likely to be sized differently to the metric sized ones available here? Has anyone tried any of the other brands they have on their racks, as obviously I can't tell from the photos how smooth the needles or the joins of the circular needles might be. Even though I have no idea how practical they'd be, I'm definitely tempted to ask Michael to get me one of the 'KA' 22cm circular needles to have a play with as I've never even heard of circular needles that short before. :)

Just by the way... Is anyone else amused that my husband sent me yarn p*rn from Tokyo? ;)