December 25, 2025, Books and Kukkii officially launched. The first order of almost one hundred English titles, carefully selected from some of the best Japanese and Korean authors, arrived safely from our supplier. The website was up and running, as were our Facebook, Instagram, and, of course, TikTok pages. Everything was in place. The show could finally begin.
Let’s jump back in time and see how it all started. Owning a bookstore is a quiet, secret dream many book lovers carry with them, much like the desire to one day write a book of their own. It grows slowly, almost naturally, after years spent among books. Eventually, reading alone no longer feels enough. You want to go further, to deepen the relationship, and to glimpse the part of the iceberg that remains hidden from us as “simple” readers.
I always envisioned the bookstore I would one day own as a small, cozy place, somewhere, with high wooden bookshelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling, filled with books, their covers facing you rather than their spines. A place where one could buy books, coffee, and cookies — just as the name suggests: Books and Kukkii, a name proposed by my dear wife. The idea grew slowly, patiently, as I read more and more, until my mind could no longer contain it. It had to step into the real world — or, at least as a first step, into the virtual one: the World Wide Web.
I personally worked on the website booksandkukki.com, spending many hours on it — but with pleasure. The challenge was to recreate, as much as possible, the cozy, calm, and relaxing atmosphere I imagined for the physical bookstore through the website’s design and aesthetics. I cannot say for certain if I succeeded; that is for the site’s visitors to judge. Personally, however, I was quite satisfied with the result.
I know a website can never fully compete with a physical space where you can touch books, feel them, and browse freely. As a reader and book lover myself, I understand the importance of that first encounter with a book before buying it. Still, I have done my best to convey as many of those sensations as possible through the site, while we wait for Books and Kukkii to bloom in the physical world — and for the day we can finally offer you cookies made from my wife’s secret recipe.
A final point, to keep this article from getting too long: you may be wondering why Japanese and Korean books. I’ve already explored this in another post on the blog, that I invite you to read, so I won’t repeat myself here. But know that Books and Kukkii plans to welcome authors from other countries to its shelves in the future. Still, our main focus will always remain Asian literature, primarily Japanese and Korean.
That’s all I have to share for now. If you have any questions about Books and Kukkii, feel free to leave them in the comments.