Japanese knitting patterns

It's Friday and today's interesting (to me) knitting topic is Japanese knitting patterns. I don't know what it is about Japanese knitting books and magazines, but I love them. Japanese patterns are all charted and are standardized by Japan Industrial Standard (or JIS). So once you can translate most of the chart, you can figure out the basics of the pattern. I've listed the websites I use below. Most of them are from "Tata & Tatao".

1. Basics of Japanese Knitting
2. Two kinds of charts, detailed and simplified
3. Charts and knitting instruction - back & forth / circular
4. Hatched or curved line - shaping on the edge
5. Decreasing and increasing in the middle of fabric
6. Chart symbols
7. Basics from Habu Textiles
8. To translate a page from Japanese to English, I use babel fish

Here's an example of a free Japanese pattern (pdf): click here.
(in order to view this page, Adobe reader will need to download the Japanese character set).

I currently have 3 Japanese knitting books and 2 issues of a Japanese quarterly magazine (each issue has over 60 patterns!). They are so well diagrammed and illustrated that I'm sure I could make it through a project, although I haven't made the leap yet. Maybe that should be my New Year challenge...anyone up for it?