Finding "Let's Find Pokemon!"

Details here regarding my background with this book, this series, and the efforts made/being made to detail as much of it and it's creation as possible. I am currently in the process of trying to reach out to some of the creators on Linkdin (yes, really) in order to find out more about how they were made, why many never made it to North America, and any leads on the enigmatic Kazunori Aihara.

An Artifact Unearthed

Christmas 2023 - I was at my Mom's house, helping put away the christmas decorations (aproximately 2hrs after opening gifts, as was tradition). The closet where we stored these supplies was stratified, the house lived in for only 6-ish years but the history still aparent in this one closet, unable to ever be optimized. Here was my sister and I's trumpet, rust-rotted by spit decades old, my book report on grey wolves from elementary school with art that I'm still legitimately proud of, notebooks of math assignments we hadn't had the heart to throw away even after 10+ moves, even after my sisters and I were now grown ups living in our own houses and apartments.

My mom is not the most sentimental person when it comes to purchased objects. Artwork, photos, notebooks could be kept and stored in her house until we got houses of our own, she would say, but old clothing, old blankets, old stuffed animals, old VHS/DVDs would be tossed or donated every time we moved to a new home or when one of us packed up to move out or go to college.

Here, in the furthest back corner, in a carboard box with packing tape fraying and corners worn with age, lay the unlikely seeds of this website. Between me and my three siblings, we were allowed A box to store books to have saved for our future children (something most of us never suspected we would have, my brother being the only straight one of the 4 of us). In it were series we enjoyed, the first two Percy Jackson series' from me, the Harry Potter books from my sisters, along with children's books we cherished and felt influenced us. Socks for Supper, Strega Nona, Store Soup - as well as other books that didn't start with 'S'- like this weird beaver book i've never heard anyone talk about and, of course, Let's Find Pokemon Complete Edition (2006).

This yearly dig down memory lane had me happily flipping through these pages while my husband drove us home. The book became a reliable destraction for me - as 2024 was the year I really started weening off of scroll based social media and also trying to use my phone less. Learning that the book had every single(original 150)pokemon in each scene was a the first moment I really realized that these books were something special. For a while, the book became a bathroom staple that I would browse as a replacement for using my phone.

The first search

The first time I realized these books were an oddity was "Pikachu's Sweet Dream of Pikachu Forest". The page asked me to"count the pikachu in the picture". I didn't want to do that, I just wanted to know the answer, so I flipped to the answers page to satisfy my curiousity. Hm. There was no answer. That's a bit annoying - but oh well, I'll just look it up!

Damn, that was a lot of articles and videos about Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee, but really? No information at all about this oversight? No instant way to satisfy my curiousity?

As as lifelong pokemon fan, this was the first time that I ever had a pokemon related mystery that couldn't be solved through a google search. It was a bit odd and very exciting! I wanted to learn more about these books and find out why they didn't have the audience or attention I thought they deserved!

Digging deeper

more words will come i promise