Eriko Love

I have a massive girl crush on Eriko Kurosaki. I want to hug her into little tiny pieces. She is famous in Japan for being a manicurist. She releases new books constantly. She has a nail tech school, her own salons and her own brand of nail decorations. She is living one of my pipe dreams. (The others involve owning my own enormous restaurant, or being a character designer for film/video games)

I would consider naming my own daughter Eriko...if it wasn't so similar to Erica, which happens to be the name of a person I absolutely despise.

Eriko's nail art, and that of her techs and students, is lovely. Two of her nail books I have in the picture above are from 2005, and they are so beautiful they hold up against nail art from today. That's something that is not always the case; as more and more nail artists advance and more new techniques and equipment are introduced, some nails from even a couple years ago end up looking rather rough and unpolished. No pun intended.

Her style is lovely, very feminine, classy and perfect in its excecution. Even her "flashier" styles are still subdued enough that you could probably wear them at work. (In Japan of course, because here more than a bright shade of polish is apt to earn you weird looks!)

I think I should point this out, just to show how much of this stuff I own:

I can now recognize the Japanese on this book. Mostly, anyway. I know the first part says "Eriko". I recognize the "no" symbol (I even use it in my title) so I realize combined it reads Eriko's. The symbols below that I have seen on enough nail books to figure out part it means "nail". I am assuming the kanji before it is something like "adult", due to the fact I know this book is meant to be for grown-up women who want nails to fit their lifestyles. So, just by looking at the title, I can read that it is a nail art book by Eriko....which means when I see more books by her on websites, I can tell by the title instead of going to the trouble to translate it.
The fact I have learned even this little amount shows me that just by keeping Japanese books around and constantly looking at them, I can pick up information.

Haha, wow.

I'm sure I will have some examples of the lovely nails found in these books up soon. I guess I just felt like talking today instead of picture taking.