Sailor Moon Forum

Just noticed. shoppingmalljapan.com has a Luna plushie in the banner.

I tried using japamart.com today for the first time. Can't write a full review comparing it to fromjapan.co.jp since I'm still in the process of bidding, but one detail I have found already to be very inconvinient is adding deposits. On japamart.com you have to send your deposit via paypal and then wait for its manual approval and adding to your account. It took around 20 hours for them to add mine. It's needless to explain that if you are bidding on an item that ends soon and you don't have enough money in your deposit, you will lose it, since there is no way to add a deposit quickly. While at fromjapan.co.jp your deposit is added and available for bidding the very second you fill in the payment form and press submit button.

thats why I hate japanmart I had money troubles because they refunded so slowly

I'VE BEEN WANTING A LUNA PLUSHIE FOR SO LOOOONG

Another disadvantage of japamart.com is that they process orders and ship items very slow. When I get a notification about my item's arrival to fromjapan.co.jp, I make a payment, and they always send my item on the very next day.
As to japamart, I requested them to send my item three days ago already, and I'm still waiting for an invoice that I must pay before they finally ship it. X_X

Lazy arses.

I think my YHJapan service is pretty fast, when I've paid the shipping price I usually get an email the next morning telling me it's been shipped.

I finally signed up for one of these. I'm wondering though, how do you usually do searches? Do you paste in stuff like 美少女戦士セーラームーン and just look through it all, or is there a way for someone like me (who doesn't know any Japanese) do find a list of commonly used words like locket, wand, brooch, etc.?

I want to find Sailor V manga and some waaaaaands

I'm not sure. Maybe if you email your service they can give you the keywords in Japanese. That's what I do when looking for specific stuff anyway.

Oh yeah they seem to have a thing where you can list what you want and they will find it for you. Wow that's neat. This is going to be baaaaaad for my money xD

Tell me about it. But try to keep to a budget. If you bid to much without knowing how much it will be with fees, thats when you over spend.

Yeah, I'm going to have to start with something really small to see how it plays out.

You must be able to figure out the words you need without any Japanese knowledge. It's not that difficult, especially since majority of those keywords will be English words spelled in katakana. E.g., "rod" > "ロッド", "cosplay" > "コスプレ", "compact" > "コンパクト", "video" > "ビデオ", etc. You can use Google translator tool to get the words you need, paste them into search and see what you get. After several searches you will remember a few essential words, so later on you can type them from your keyboard. So when you look for something your search should be "セーラームーン" + one keyword for item you want. E.g., here is the search for "Sailor Moon rod":

http://search.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/sear ... 9&auccat=0

Using "find it for me" service is not the best idea, IMO, since you can't compare quality of items, prices, etc.
Also, if you perform a basic "Sailor Moon" search: http://search.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/s ... 0jp&acc=jp
check the drop down menu with categories on the right from the search field. It can be very useful, too. E.g., all CDs are listed in the "音楽" category, all books and doujinshi - in "本、雑誌". Just browse the first pages of those categories and you will figure what they are about even without understanding what those kanji and kana mean.

Also if your looking for wands, use a translator to get some idea of the conditon. Here is one
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpage8.auctions.yahoo.co.jp%2Fjp%2Fauction%2Fh134887028
The translations are never very good, so it's a good idea to get used to decifering ''engrish''.

Thanks for the tips guys! This is all very helpful

I've been using Shopping Mall Japan to buy from Y!J for two or three years now, so I thought I would pitch in about my experience ^^ I never used any other services but I haven't felt the need to. For shopping on Y!J in general, I've noticed a few pros and cons. The pros obviously outweigh the cons otherwise I wouldn't do it ^^; but here's what I've observed.

Pros:
-This is the not only the cheapest and fastest way to get a lot of rare items, but it is often the ONLY place to find certain things. If you're looking for something rare, it might show up on eBay next week.. or next year, and probably for a lot more money. And not just a few dollars, but possibly hundreds, depending on the item.

Cons:
-It's really easy to rack up a bit of debt because SMJ is really lenient about when you pay for things. Sort of the same problem with credit cards in general, but worse.
-95% of the time you get what you think you will, but sometimes the translation just isn't clear enough for you to know that a wand doesn't work or is missing its battery cover. Although, I have gotten better stuff than what I thought I was getting, like when I bought a lot of loose dolls and some of them ended up being the rarer talking versions
-It takes a long time to get your items

Umm.. some tips. Awhile back I made an excel spreadsheet that I could put in the price in yen and it would give me the exact amount I'd pay in USD instantly with all the fees and stuff calculated. I don't do this anymore, but it was useful when I was buying a bunch of stuff.

For searching, I look at all the Sailor Moon items every day (search term just セーラームーン) filtered by ending time. If you like to be more specific, Rinkya and SMJ both have decent search engines you can use even if you're not using their sites to buy from ^^;

Hope that helps someone ^^;

Mara, Would you be able to give me the keywords for "Sailor moon doll"?

I want to find some nice dollies.

Most dolls are not named as such, so it's better to browse this category, almost all dolls are listed here: http://search4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/ ... ccat=25888

Thank you!!!

Out of curiosity, why did you try another service? Are they better than Fromjapan in any way?

It's more crappy than fromjapan in all possible ways apart from one detail: japamart allows you to order items listed in etc. > adult category. That's the only reason to use it. It's a pity that fromjapan doesn't allow ordering such items since basically all other mediator companies handle them, and there are a lot of beautiful items in that category, some of them can't be even called "adult" properly, e.g., that custom modded garage kit of Hotaru in gothic lolita-style outfit with a lot of bows and frills (I posted a photo in "items on your wish list" thread).

They can actually tell? I figured they just packed and sent it off, not caring much about the contents.

Unless its a car or something.

There is no technical possibility to place a bid on such an item using fromjpapan service, since there is a script on their website checking what category item is listed in. Besides, they specifically mention on their website that all "adult" items are banned from their service.

I see. Aren't they clever?

I have got this today in the mail box:

CD with doujinshi scans violates copyrights. For sure it is, and I know this pretty well without their explanation. As if all Sailor Moon paper doujinshi (which they agree to handle) do not rape Toei & Naoko's copyrights. What a bunch of hypocrites.

Isn't Japan especially strict with copyright stuff?

Yep. Japan is renown for its especially strict copyright policies. By a pure coincidence, though, the officials still didn't notice some five hundred thousand people *secretly* gathering twice a year on a *small* event which violates copyrights of all existing companies in all possible ways - a.k.a. Comiket.
I guess it indeed has something to do with Japanese policies, but on dealing with foreigners, rather than on their copyright policies. There is a similar limitation at dlsite.com - when a Japanese wants to publish an amateur game with characters from some official anime/manga series, it's quite fine, and you can find thousands of such games there; it's needless to explain that any game made by a gaijin is banned if it is based on some official series.

It looks like FromJapan is launching a their new site on November 25. I've read some of the new benefits, and it seems OK. Here is what they said:

In order to provide every member a more convenient and easy-to-use proxy shopping system, FROM JAPAN has been building new website since 2008. But because the system of FROM JAPAN is very big and complicated, we could not launch it as scheduled. But for now, all the new functions have been tested okay and time is ripe to launch it. Therefore we decided to put it into use on the 25th of this month.

Most of the benefits amount to the fact that they don't seem to nickel and dime you so much. Indeed, the time is ripe.

I've only ever used ShoppingMallJapan, but I have not been doing so very long... (well, since 2009 but maybe only since the summer I think?) like Maraviollantes describes with japamart, you put in a deposit but it can take awhile for the deposit to come through... however they convert your deposit to yen and then they basically give you bidding power up to 5X that amount... so I think I have only given them a $50 deposit, which could roughly translate to 5000 yen, but I am able to bid up to 27500 *something like that* I'm not sure how it works on other bidding sites... but it is nice that they allow more... but I did only start with a $25 deposit, and annoyinggly found it too low for me to bid up multiple auctions, since I would maybe want to pay 5000 yen for three different ones *thus 15000 yean total* but could only bid up to 12500 which is a problem when you're trying to win all three ^^; although it is automated bidding now which is very nice. They also have "manual bidding" which from what I read is to be used for if you want to do BIN or Adult themed stuff I guess... I've never tried it.
However, there are glitches in their system... the other day I had the worst one... I had been bidding on a plush set but it started going for an insane amount... so instead of focusing my bidding on it I decided I wanted to try for a wand... but the bidding system glitched and even though teh auction was much higher than my bid, SMJ still read me as "winning" and so my money was held for that item, and I was not able to bid on the other one ending. So I lost a few auctions I could have bid on. This was my first real time having an issue with SMJ though...
Like someone else said, it is easy to overbid/buy b/c of their leniency on how soon you have to pay haha... I also love that their sorting facility in the US is in IN so I will sometimes get the item before the shipping invoice Since they ship the items and then send you the invoice, so that it's for the exact amount of shipping...
However, it also can take awhile for items to even get batched to the US... I had some items already nearly a week old getting sent to the US. BUT they do combine shipping, and will even hold your items for about a month before they charge you any storage fees. They don't ship to your home from the US office until you tell them to. Unless the item is supposedly cheaper to be sent straight from Japan *had that happen once, and it cost me $60 to ship! T_T*

Overall I like SMJ, they seem very nice and he fact that in the US it's stored in IN makes shipping within the US super cheap and fast for me!! It's one reason why I don't want to change ^^; as for their commission fees, I don't know how they stack up against others.. I know it goes by increments, something like $5 for auctions from 1-2500yen or sth like that... sometimes it's a bummer ^^; Remember that the exchange rate also plays a factor... right now the yen is a little stronger than the US $ *has been for awhile* but once the US $ dipped and I had two auctions same price but a few days apart, and I ended up paying more for one ^^;

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As to searches, when I go to Yahoo Japan Auctions I have a bookmarked page with "セーラームーン” already in the search field... so the page automatically brings up SM auctions... from there since I know some Japanese I find it's not to hard to search if I go for specifics... but also if you click on the search field, type a space after it will *like eBay* give you options of common searches like "セーラームーン　コスプレ” (Sailor Moon Cosplay) so that helps, too. I've never used SMJ's built in search engine...
If I really need help knowing about an item I usually put it in Yahoo's Babelfish translator... it's usually a pretty weird/bad looking translation, but I can get some of the more important info like whether they tested the item (like a wand) to see if it works... but it will say weird stuff like "There are also some which is not the cover of the part which inserts the electric battery." -Seriously, I just took this from an auction's translation ^^; It means that some are missing battery covers... but it is a weird translation as you see...

Anyway, sorry to talk so much but I thought I'd offer my little bit on SMJ... it has good and bad points but overall they ship items very securely and I don't think the wait is too bad... I mean, it takes 2 weeks to send something to Germany straight from my home. I can sometimes get an item that had to go through two shipping services/get invoices and pay them/be combined with other auction buys sometimes in about the same time frame if I win the items within a day or so of each other...

Definition of "adult" on Y!J is very loose, so sometimes it makes sense to check those sections even if you are not interested in actual adult stuff. Good examples are those beautiful custom made gothic-lolita garage kits I mentioned in the kits threads. There is nothing adult about them, but still they are listed in the adult section.

But I buy the kits and build and paint them myself ^^; I have only ever bought one completed kit, and that was my Mercury one. Only because she was cheap, and she is what got me into GKs anyway ^^; I just don't need the manual bidding for something like that then... though maybe if that naked winged Usagi kit was there... I have one of her but it's a terrible mess... one horrible recast *sigh* I've tried working on her but her hand is so bubbled and brittle fingers are basically crumbling apart though I'm sure the original kit would be too expensive for me anyway ^^;