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Japan has produced some very interesting icons. Finding and getting them is the trick. I have compiled the following links to the largest and most reliable pages I have found. Though some of these sites have some english, you will need to get accustomed to totally incomprehensible pages (unless you have the Kanji Mac OS installed). If you use Netscape Navigator finding and downloading the sets isn't that difficult. You need to place your cursor over links (turn on link underlining ) and read the english translation that appears at the bottom of your browser window in order to get around. Some Japanese archives come stuffed with .lzh compression, but most all of them are easily expanded with Stuffit Expander. Users of MacOS 8.5+ will benefit from doing a custom install of the multilingual internet access components. Installing this addition to 8.0 allows some pages to display the proper Japanese characters. Also, be prepared for occasional slow connections or downloads if you're connecting from the US. |
Achiko's Wonderland
Achiko offers a selection of folders, disks, and other icons mostly featuring a puppy. Kinda rough, but super cute.
Akiko's Homepage
Cats, cute animals, and desktop patterns all drawn up in a recognizable Japanese style.
Akira Suzuki
Japanese prefectural marks, folders, vegetables, 3D objects, music, and more.
Aoki Icon Factory
Flat graphic system replacements and hard disks. Interesting.
Aru Aru
Cool abstract tiles, a "Delta" folder system replacement set (worth it for the server icons alone), mouths, lingerie, 3-D shaded hearts, CPUs, and more.
Ayazo's Icon Series
Icons based on a rather comical monkey.
B'room Workshop
Very light & pastel deep forest icons, architecture, text, and many abstractions.
Charlie's World /Icon House
Thematic Site featuring a prairy dog named Charlie in icons, animated gifs, cursors, and all sorts of other system enhancements. Additionally the same site contains the Icon House collection of just about every thing from food to applications to animals in both Windows and Mac formats. Lots of well done stuff here.
Chesky Com Land
Food, holidays, and loads of teddy bears/people.
Chie's Homepage
Japanese > collections of everyday objects and people as well as animals.
Club Emergency
Shockwave plug-in required here. Anime galore: Lupin the III, Totoro, City Hunter, Dragon Ball Z, and tons more.
Cool Cat Icons
This cat seems to be a popular Japanese cartoon personality. This page offers many large gifs of cat in a variety of poses. The resourceful Mac user can easily convert these gifs to icons.
Cyber Mac Icon Gallery
Nice custom application, BeBox system, and Toy Story icons.
Opu Cool Icon Collection
Original Evangelion and Pingu sets, plus others that look like they're from the usual FTP sites and icon pages.
Emu Game Icon Machine
Loads of icons based on currently emulated video game hardware. I'm an emu fanatic so as far as I'm concerned this is a score!
Eva Icons
Nice Japanese anime Evangelion sets. Also has some kick ass soul/R&B icons.
Evangelion/3rd Angel Icons
I have no official title for this site as it's almost entirely in Japanese. More anime icons from Evangelion, 3rd Angel, and more.
Fantastic Science Lab
Mac OS 8 folder icon sets, Movieplayer icons, and more.
Flower Icons
Flower icons. Lots and lots of 'em.
Gizmo and Orang-Utang
Lots of icons featuring "Sachi", a little monkey, plus others.
Gladee's Icons
Bears, smiley faces, and more.
Gotousa
Loads of cartoon icons: Disney, Wallace & Gromit, Peanuts, Winnie the Pooh, and some you've probably never heard of if you're not Japanese.
Hantaro's Icon Gallery
Japanese site with lots of different and interesting icons of people, sewing, and animals.
HF Icons
Squeeky clean bass lures, Sega Rally 2, car rally and computer hardware icons. For Macs and Windows.
Hide's Icons
Loads of super high-quality food icons, black cat icons, and Icon Town building icons. Often updated and well worth the visit!
Hisao's Icons
Actually a link list that has small previews available. There are some sets I hadn't seen before.
I's Icons
CPU icons galore! Plus alphabet icons and others. You may have seen some of these on the Vector Japanese FTP site.
Icon-Hokan Keikaku
Anime: Evangelon and Battle Athletes.
Icon Museum
High quality video game and anime icons plus a few more.
Icon World
A full fledged Japanese icon links page with some new links as well as some of the "classic" ones you've seen here and elsewhere. You can directly download archives from here, or go to the source page. Here you will find a set of cigarette icons, small "boy" icons, and a great little penguin with an alien to name a few. (thanx to my housemate, Eli, for locating this one)
Idea
Nice Mac CPUs, printers, magneto optical cartridges, and floppies. In English or Japanese.
Image Dive
This nice graphical site features a set of icons that I can't seem to find after they redesigned the site. You'll have to have Macromedia's Shockwave/Flash plug-in installed to get these though. 100 Mac OS faces on 3-D folders, all very well done and featuring a variety of poses and expressions. Excellent!
I-MIL
Many sets worth exploring. Lots of well done animals, plants, people and more than I can list here.
Iron Devil's Icon Shop
High quality guitar, fishing, System Folders, hardware, and miscellaneous objects and plenty more. This guy is prolific, so check back every so often. One of my favorite Japanese sites.
Isuzuda's Icons
Isuzu car icons.
Jionji Football Association
That's football as in soccer, and these related icons are gifs.
Junkyard
I've seen some of these available from the vector ftp archives. Xmas, natural objects, Uta-maro traditional Japanese art, system folders, and more by Kahoo (same guy who does most of the Evangelion icons). I'm posting this as a separate link for now so you don't miss it. Also, he's got some killer new soul/R&B icons on the Evangelion part of his site.
Kaori's Room
Mostly a variety of folders here, with a few extras.
Kazun's Icon Factory
Well done Mac CPU icons.
Keanu the Little Dog
Icon links and some nice tea and antique icons.
Kenchan's World
Horses and related derby stuff, loads of iMac and new G3, plus older Mac CPUs.
Kerosuke's Page
Animals, bicycle race, trash cans and a lot of frogs. In English. You can get these from the Vector FTP site as well. This page uses Shockwave, though it isn't essential.
Kinjoh's Ucon's
Beautiful and creative folder icons. These are linked from Icon World as well.
Kirinji/Icon Museo
Lots here or just about everything done up as folders and standard icons. A big load of stuff worth browsing. There are multiple pages of icons, so be careful not to miss the links.
A nice modern set of folders, Netscape/Photoshop/Movieplayer replacement icons, a whole variety of system items, digital cameras/more, some uniquely drawn "graffiti" icons, and some excellent 3D cigarette packs. Neat stuff.
Kool Desktop
Japanese Mac customization site with links to other sites.
Kurare'z File Library
Among the Kaleidoscope color schemes and other software you'll find some icons of insects, trashcans, people, and more.
Mac Icon Homepage
One archive of roughly drawn cats in a variety of poses plus a whale, dolphin, and a bed.
Macintosh Desktop Contents
A collection of links to Mac related files and sites with everything you'd need to customize your desktop. Naturally icon links are included, though you'll find them in my list here as well.
Makog
A nifty variety of fish, everyday objects, folders, and other icons.
Marimo's Home
This woman runs a very customized and cute Mac. At this site she shares some of her desktop enhancements which include lots of cute animal icons.
Meiko's Homepage
Super cute gerbils and other furry critters. Also seen on the Vector FTP site.
Midnight Special
Some Japanese Grateful Dead Icons.
Mikworks Desktop Design
Soccer team uniforms, movie trailers, Mac CPUs, folders, Star Wars/The Band/70's rock stars/soccer star portaits and custom application icons all drawn up in a unique hi-res style. Most archives are available for Mac & Windows.
Mioko Watabiki Gallery
Available in English. These are for Windows users, but are also available as gifs for the industrious Mac user. An interesting collection of everyday objects, airplanes, seashells and more in an almost photographic style.
Mozco !Garash!
Lots of superb icons of all sorts including everyday objects, Christmas, food, system folders, people, and more. There are 15 volumes of Mozco archives, and one ruGANg archive. Each archive is emailware, meaning that you can access locked bonus icons by emailing the author. This is quite a collection, worth your time. A personal favorite.
Niiro's Icons
Nice variety of beautiful folder icons.
Norie Kadokura Homepage
Floppy disks, cartoon and video game characters.
Northfox Nature Icons
Lots of birds and landscape icons.
Nu Shooz
High quality shoe icons.
Nyokkiri Real Icons
Unless you pay a shareware fee, you can only download a high quality sampler (worth it 'tho). These icons are very photographic, hence the "real". I got a tip that these archives are infested with Word macro viruses! If you use Word use caution and scan your download immediately after decompression!
Peconarl's Free Icon Distributing Station
Mac hardware, folders, trash cans, food, instruments, leisure, jazz, and more.
Powerbook Icons
High quality Powerbook icons with a 3D style.
Ryo's Studio
Toyotas, sports, animation, folders, cpus, and more. You may have seen some of these on the Vector Japanese FTP site.
Satoshi Files
Flat outlined grapchical folders and system-related icons, plus desktop patterns and more.
Sawa's Icons
Cute icons of food, flowers, animals, etc.
Site Ken-YA
Thomas the Train icons
Shi-Ztu Icon Gallery
Detailed icons of cute little dogs for Mac & Windows.
Soccer Yunicon
Mostly soccer icons in LZH and ZIP archives for Mac and Windows.
Studio Can
Simple shape icons, which in their own way are kinda neat.
Studio Zappa
Shareware and freeware icons in several categories. There are icons of people (in all sorts of settings), folders, robots, airplanes, and fantasy related beasts to name a few.
Tamago Emi Homepage
Folders, people and more.
Tera's Room
A variety of guitar icons.
The Simpson Depot
Everything Simpsons. Has original icons unique to the site plus the famous anonymous sets that have been around for years.
Thoru Yamamoto's Works
Rather interesting Japanese site with childlike stories about a variety of characters in HyperCard and Shockwave formats. You'll find some excellent Zizi icons. Icons are also in other sections of his site, each story having a set under a "gifts" link. This is a neat place and the icons rock!
Tomozo's Web
Featuring Powerbook icons, and monkeys just like the ones at Ayazo's Icon Series. Includes an English page.
One of the larger Japanese Macintosh FTP sites that offers a goldmine of icons. This links directly to the root icon directory where you will probably want to use the "httpd" button to download the archives. There are many Japanese icons that you will only find here. Seems to get new stuff about once a month.
Yoshihito Tada Home Page
Wonderful dimensional icons of people, system folder items, and more. Good stuff!
Zemi
Lots of icons in categories too diverse to list. These are compressed in LZH archives.
