Stephen’s World

Buying from Japan..

Have you ever wanted to buy something from Japan, but after searching the web you cannot find it or the Japanese retailer will not send it to you overseas? Well someone has put online a service to help us non-Japanese to purchase Japanese only goods without all the hassle of going to Japan to get them…

Found this place while looking for someplace to order a game from, I found the game but I wasn’t able to get it shipped from the company in Japan. Luckily for I could read enough of the Japanese on the site to figure out that they don’t ship outside Japan. Then someone mentioned Akibado, basically they act as a middle man.

Their site is in english, you go there ask them for a free estimate for what you want to buy and they go away and search for the item and come back with the options and a price. They can even search the Japanese Auction Sites (oddly eBay don’t have a Japanese outfit, but Yahoo does). Then you can send in your order, they will buy the item have it shipped to their Japanese address and then ship it to you in your home country. Now this costs you a little more, for instance I bought a game costs about 9000 Yen in the shops, they add 2000 for handling and then add the shipping costs to me in the UK.

It seems a pretty cool service, I’ll probably use them again if I find something I want, maybe a PS3 when they come out cos they are bound to be released in Japan first and not Europe until a year later. Well you can find Akibado here.