neko's thinkbox

neko takes a break from making big hauls and shares some of his routine.

I’ve received quite a few mails in the past couple of months asking me about how I order this and that, especially the Hisui Moe Moe Bathtowel and the Pangya caddie plushies which I got from Yahoo! Auctions Japan.

Instead of replying to every mail, I’ll just post a small tutorial on here so everyone can get that piece of information, even those who didn’t dare to ask.

Note that there are many possible choices you can make when shopping online. I merely provide useful links and a small introduction to shopping on Japanese websites – gathering specific information and comparing is up to you, though.

I’d also like to point out that I will NOT order anything for anyone. I’ll be glad to help with search terms or links, but my cash (as little as there may be right now) will stay in my wallet. Thank you for your understanding.

Where to search?

Sure, you need to be sure about what you want first. Figurines? Artbooks, cels? Manga, doujins? Pillow covers, magazines, dvds, cds, eroges, food? And so on and so forth. But for most of these, you don’t need to go to great lengths to find them; odds are that there is at least one English site you can import Japanese stuff through.

In 80% of the cases, there is at least one webshop that sells the goodie(s) you want. For example (bias alarm!), my preferred sites for figurines are HobbyLink Japan and Hobby Search, music at CDJapan , mangas/artbooks at amazon Japan, magazine subscriptions and random wacky stuff at Jlist, etc etc.

When I need something, I check this pool of links first before widening my search. Internet is hueg, right? And I don’t have to teach you how to do a proper google search, do I? Do compare availability, prices and shipping/handling fees before placing your orders.

Don’t rush, don’t be overwhelmed by information. Take your time, and make wise choices you will not regret.

However, as you might already have experienced, sometimes it’s not that easy to find the thing(s) you want, especially the lesser popular or old/sold out/rare stuff. In this case, there is one last resort (at least that’s how far I go): Yahoo! Auctions Japan (Y!AJ). You know eBay? Well, there’s no eBay service in Japan, but YAJ is exactly the same: a marketplace/auction website, and a real treasure trove where you can find almost everything, especially doujins. (Of course, it’s by far not the only Japanese webshop, but it’s where I found all of my stuff so far. If you’re really desperate, google might help!)

There are three main problems with Y!AJ and most of the other Japanese webshops, however.

The problems: language, searching and shipping

The first, obviously, is that the entire site is in Japanese – not good if you can’t read it. Unlike amazon Japan, they don’t offer any English translation on their pages. Your best bet is to use either Google Language Tools, Babelfish, or my fav, Excite to translate the page. (Make sure to select 日→英 on Excite.)

The second problem, sometimes the most difficult one: finding the stuff you want. Your search terms on Y!AJ (as well as on other Japanese pages, haha) must be in Japanese. It’s a little trickier here: if you can’t type the search terms yourself, you can always try to copy/paste some Japanese symbols from other pages. Or, if you can’t read jack, simply ask someone to provide you the appropriate search term(s).

On Y!AJ, old/rare stuff is quite hard to find and takes a lot of patience. Sometimes, auctions disappear and no results may be returned. The only solution there is to bookmark the search results page , and to check it regularly. For my Hisui towel for instance, I had to wait a couple of weeks until someone put up an auction with it.

The third problem: the vast majority of the sellers do not ship internationally. And this is where external shopping/auction services kick in.

Patience is the key to snatch the best items! (btw I wouldn’t mind a Chitose plushie… but it doesn’t exist afaik ._.)

The solution: shopping services

There are plenty of such proxy services: Rinkya, Shopping Mall Japan, Akibado, Crescent Shop, JIGS, Himeya Shop etc.

Basically, what they all do is bidding/ordering the stuff you want, have it ship to their own office addresses in Japan, then forward it to you (mostly) anywhere in the world (you’ll need to check with any service).

So far, I have only been using Rinkya, which concerns Y!AJ only. They state on their frontpage: “Rinkya will translate the auction, contact the seller, pay the seller on your behalf and ship your items out to you! We accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Postepay & Paypal,” and that’s everything you need.

What’s the difference between all of these services? I reckon that most of these pages (except HS) offer similar functionality with Y!AJ bidding, and also allow you to shop on pages other than Y!AJ – but it all boils down to reliability, speed, simplicity and shipping+handling fees/commissions.

Once again, I cannot comment on other services, but Rinkya’s commissions/handling fees are quite high, and their bidding engine might seem a little confusing at first. On the other hand, service and reliability are top notch, all of my items arrived in mint condition so far, I have absolutely nothing to complain about that.
From what I heard from a couple of friends, SMJ’s fees are smaller, but apparently the people there are pretty “lazy”, as in slow shipping or something like that. That’s up to you to check out and decide, of course.

Either way, with any service, do expect commissions to be relatively high. After all, they need to pay for the seller’s shipping too, and need to make profit in some way or another as well.

To those who used any of the other services: perhaps you could share your own experiences?

Curry-senpai’s advice corner!

General advice

Here’s some general advice you better keep in mind:

• It is crucial with any service that you have a (valid, duh) credit card or nothing goes. Wait, the majority of online shops require a credit card anyway. Ah well. If you have no credit card… well, tough luck. Try to convince someone to order it for you (once again, don’t bother asking me – I won’t do it for you, sorry.)
• Be responsible, know your limits. Credit cards are the easiest and fastest way to deplete money. Two figs here, mangas there, cels elsewhere, and some snacks over there… It goes faster than you think! And even the smallest amounts add up to a huge bill. Really, do watch out.
• For search terms, if you really don’t know what to do, try to find the hiragana/kanji of the name of the series/character of your interest on Wikipedia or google. Watch out, some short/ambiguous terms might give you tons of unrelated matches – on some sites, Hisui (翡翠) returns jewelry with Jade stones (because Hisui means Jade).
• General terms: manga (漫画 or まんが or コミック), doujin (同人), poster (ポスター), towel (タオル), plushie (ぬいぐるみ), err… ah well. Use this link to look up the Japanese equivalent of some of your usual search terms.
• Don’t just compare the price of the ware, but also shipping/handling costs of the shop. Some pages also give out points for every purchase, which can give you a small discount on the ware price.
• Normally, customs shouldn’t mess with your stuff, but then again it might vary from country to country. All of my imports went flawlessly up to date, but who knows…

Some Rinkya tips:

• Please make sure to sign up with due time though, as it will most likely take a while before you will be able to place a bid – and someone else might snatch that uber rare doujin away. With Rinkya, it took a couple of days – identity confirmation and credit card charging and stuff, you know. Tedious, but pretty secure.
• Make sure to bid on auctions from members in relatively good standing, or your fees will increase drastically.
• Better: make sure to do everything right according to their FAQ and TOS. For instance, Rinkya will charge you horrible (3-digit) fees if their own Y!AJ account gets a bad rating because of you.

…can’t really think of anything else that would be blatantly obvious at the moment.

Argh, sorry if this feels so superficial, but that’s basically all I do to get my stuff. I hope it was at least a little bit helpful, and not too vague and confusing. I’m up for any questions, but for specifics, you might find more information in the respective shop’s FAQ. Once again, please refrain from asking me to buy something for you, unless you offer one million dollars as pocket money. Srsly, don’t. Thank you ^^

Last but not least thanks to mellow_bunny for proofreading and advice. <3

All right! Happy spending!