I heard about a Japanese company offering to shop for you in Japan and collecting your purchases into a single parcel before shipping them to you abroad. A nice service for Japanese expats... Would you know of such a web site/company?

There are many. The service is called 転送.

http://www.tenso.com/
http://www.dankedanke.com/
http://frontier-e.com/
http://www.kaigai2001.com/
http://www.kaigai-tenso.com/

Bun none of them sends a needle for less than 20 dollars.

Thanks a lot.
Would you recommend one against others?

Can they get things from amazon.jp for you, at best price?
What is the average amount it starts getting interesting to buy from them?

http://www.crescent-shop.com/
the best in my opinion, at least for buying in Yahoo auctions

Just in case you weren't aware, if you want to shop with Amazon.jp, they do ship internationally and you can order in English.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/In-English/b?ie=...de=1094656

It's kind of pricey though.

Amazon.co.jp seems to only ships BOOKS, VIDEOS, DVDS...
... but not SHOES, or RICE-COOKERS and so on:

see "The following product lines may be shipped to international addresses: Books, CDs, DVDs, and Videos (with some exceptions)." on http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/help/custome … d=1039606.

Another question regarding all the 転送 company: can they offer the lowest price of a product as displayed on amazon.co.jp or on another web site, or will they rate you for another, medium or higher price for the same product?

Asakk, what is your criteria to consider http://www.crescent-shop.com/ as the best?

YogaSpirit Wrote:Amazon.co.jp seems to only ships BOOKS, VIDEOS, DVDS...
... but not SHOES, or RICE-COOKERS and so on:

Oh, I see. Until I came across your other thread today, I had no idea you were hoping to buy shoes or rice cookers.

Here's a website that sells quality Japanese brand rice cookers shipped out of the UK.

http://www.yumasia.co.uk/

Kiokku, thanks a lot for the link. This is what I've looking for for bout 2 months. Still, their offerings are kind of pricey!

My following question is still open regarding all the 転送 company: can they offer the lowest price of a product as displayed on amazon.co.jp or on another web site, or will they rate you for another, medium or higher price for the same product?

YogaSpirit Wrote:Asakk, what is your criteria to consider http://www.crescent-shop.com/ as the best?

Because with other services that buy auctions for you, you need to e-mail them asking them to bid for you in an item. In crescent-shop they have a system where you bid from their website, you increase your bid there,and etc. And their fees aren't so expensive for such an useful system (you pay 500 yen for each auction you won worth up to 4000 yen, and for those worth more than 4000 yen you pay 12,5% of the winning price). Of course, you also have to pay for the domestic shipping (from the seller to them) the international shipping, a bank fee (or something of the sort, around 250 yen) but I still find it reasonable as you find many cheap things there. And you pay with paypal, which is great too so you don't need to share you credit card number.

I had a quick look at http://www.tenso.com/ and see they offer you to shop on Japanese web sites while entering their address as the shipping address. Then they will package your goods and ship them to you abroad.

My issue is the following:
- I would like to buy this pair of shoes on this Japanese web site http://item.rakuten.co.jp/essendo/mw6500/
- Unfortunately? I can't read Japanese. So I'm unable to shop online on Japanese web site, and fill the command forms and so on correctly.
What's my solution?

Can anyone please help me here. I would like to understand what are the conditions to get a FREE shipping (http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/help/customer...eId=642982) for that pair of shoes (http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B002IIE0B2/re...nkCode=asn).

Same question if I buy 2 pairs in the same time, will I get the FREE shipping?

Sorry, but I'm only at frame 450 in RTK, and I'm far away from being able to decipher the Japanese on amazon.co.jp pages. Thanks in advance!

YogaSpirit, the amazon.co.jp has an english option. If you look at an item for example, near the top left it will say "View in English" or something similar. Hope that helps.

However, free shipping would probably only be to Japan internally, I don't think it's free international shipping (far from it, it's very expensive).

Sorry for not seeing the "See this text in English" option before. Thx

I don't mind about the free shipping being only for Japan domestically since I'll use a site like http://www.tenso.com/ or other, whose shipping address is Japanese.

From what I understand and what I read in the help section, everything on amazon.co.jp is free to ship as long as it costs more than 1 500 yen. Also, even if you buy 10 items, if one of those cost less than 1 500 yen, you will have to pay 300 yen shipping for that item.

So just those shoes should be free to ship to a japanese address.

No, it is charged by shipment. But you do have an option to break your order in more than one shipment. You can use this to evade importation taxes.

For instance, here we are charged 60% for electronics (also blu-ray), if it costs more than 50 dollars. So I never buy more than 1 blu-ray at a time. I prefer to pay more for shipment than to pay the abusive taxes.