Since someone asked on the ShoutBox, I'll give some insight into how buying from Japan and shipping to the USA (or any "western" country, be in Canada, Europe, etc.) works. I'm revealing some of my "secrets of the trade" here, as I use these methods myself to replenish the items sold in the shop, for which I make a little bit of profit - not enough to live on, but that profit becomes extra spending money for my own collection.
There are two completely separate methods depending on source: buying from
Yahoo! Japan Auctions (i.e., from other people) and buying from a web-based store (like Amazon.co.jp)
The natural barriers to both are the Japanese language, payment method, and warehousing. Fortunately, there are websites to help with lower these barriers, usually owned and operated by Americans living in Japan.
Keep in mind that you'll likely want the assistance of a browser with translation capabilities built-in, or rely on an
external method.
Yahoo! Japan AuctionsWhile eBay pretty much rules individual-to-individual auctioning in America, Yahoo! got to Japan first and dominates there. All the best stuff is on YJA. Since YJA is considered Japan-only, the sellers typically apply a flat shipping charge to their item regardless of where it ships from or to within Japan. Since that wouldn't work for buyers outside of Japan, you need a proxy on the islands to perform this service for you, to be the intermediary between you and the seller.
The three proxy websites I've used for YJA are
Rinkya,
Buyee, and
Big in Japan. I have much more experience with Rinkya, having only used Buyee and Big in Japan once each. If you order only one item, perhaps Buyee or Big in Japan are great, but if buying several and expecting to combine shipping, they'll eat up some of your savings with their package consolidation fees. I use Rinkya, since I typically acquire a lot of 'smalls' both for my personal collection and for resale on the site, often bringing in 10 or more items per shipment (I think once I exceeded 40). Rinkya helps by combining the domestic shipping charge for multiple items from same seller, but I can't recall if Buyee or Big in Jap also do this. Rinkya isn't perfect though: My greatest grief is Rinkya's mid-range fee hurdle: items under 1000 yen (currently about $9) are nice and cheap with no extra fee beyond the flat shipping charge (which even at $15 for most items is a little high), but starting at 1001 yen you pay an extra $20 commission charge so that takes the prices up to $29 and above. So many nice items at 1100-2000 yen I've had to pass on for being bad deals thanks to this extra $20 charge. Of course, if the price jumps above 5000 or so yen, the Rinkya fee starts to come back in line with competitors and may even be better. One thing to consider is what the items you seek to purchase typically cost on average, then research each site to find out their fees and pick the one that best fits your needs. Note that to ensure you are a faithful bidder, these sites will require a security deposit and limit your bidding amount to how large your security deposit is (for Rinkya, I think its $20 deposit per $100 bid allowance.)
All are going to pull in some items into popular categories like video games and figurines, or popular anime shows, but to find the really great stuff, you should sign up for your own YJA account, since its free. You'll want the help of a translator for this part. Once you have your own account, you can do your own searches, including into the Adult section of YJA and find the things the sites might not advertise or list on their own. Just be aware not to bid on anything by yourself: use your personal account to browse only. When time to bid or buy, use the proxy website. In my experience, they will all allow you to place bids on any item, even those in the adult category merely by suppling the YJA URL. (Be careful that some restrictions may apply, particularly to items featuring underaged characters, or flammable materials, but I've never been blocked on anything I wanted, including that Carrera Zippo, though I did ask Rinkya customer service about that first.)
The proxy website will place a bid on your behalf, and if you win, they will pay the seller through bank transfer and then charge you for the item cost, plus additional fees to cover their part of the equation, having you pay though more modern means like PayPal. The seller will mail item to the proxy's warehouse (usually in Tokyo area), and they will hold for some time (usually up to 60 days) before you have to pay to have it shipped to America. Depending on site, you can combine multiple auctions into a single shipment to America to save cost. Buyee and Big in Japan both charge extra to combine, but Rinkya does not. And all give you your choice of how to ship (EMS, airmail, surface, etc.) and for these they'll all pretty much be in the same ballpark.
So my rule of thumb would be to consider Buyee or Big in Japan if buying one single item, but Rinkya if you're looking for several to combine, and especially if from same seller.
If you signup for Rinkya and a win an auction, using me as referrer nets us both a free commission coupon for next purchase.A note of caution: Yahoo sellers can block buyers, and some have caught on to Rinkya (if not the others as well) and block their accounts from being able to bid. I've run into this a few times and had a few auctions get away from me for being unable to bid. Rinkya (and probably the others) have a backup, manual method to place bids using a non-blocked account, but its much less reliable, especially in the waning hours of an auction.
Web Store ForwardingBuying from a webstore is pretty much the same the world over: selecting items from store's items, adding to cart, and then performing a checkout action and supplying payment. However, every store has its unique quirks, almost all require their own login credentials, and each can be a cumbersome process for foreigners. As such, this is a much more complicated method than YJA, but if pulled off successfully, is often cheaper. Be prepared for a lot more Japanese translation though. More than likely, you'll need a major credit card accepted in Japan as well (I use a Visa issued by my bank, and the funds are debited right out of my bank account upon purchase.)
The store I personally use the most is
Suruga-ya, as it specializes in games, books, CDs/DVDs, trading cards, telecas, and figures: pretty much all the Sogna/VIPER memorabilia fits these groups. Suruga-ya buys used material from Japanese sellers or acquires new-old-stock material from smaller stores looking to reduce inventory, so they're turning over stock rather often and always seem to come up with something new that catches my eye. Other stores like
Comshop and
Teleca.net do the same thing, but with a more limited focus. Obviously a super-commerce site like
Amazon.co.jp will sell just about everything, but usually only in new condition.
You can usually browse these items as guest, but to buy requires registration, and this can be tricky because they'll ask for information such as Japanese shipping address. For this, you need a forwarding website. I use
Japamart. The aforementioned Buyee and Big in Japan offer these services as well, with more impressive webpages, but they can't beat Japamart's fees. You'll want to register on the forwarding website first, upon which they will give you their warehouse address and phone number. You will then use this address and phone number in the webstore registration. Upon checkout, you can still supply your own credit card information - just be sure to get your first and last name in correct order so it matches your card (Japanese websites will ask for last name first.) And double check the shipping address before hitting the final submit button because if it doesn't make to the warehouse, as a non-Japanese speaker you'd be pretty much out of luck.
After getting confirmation email from the webstore, you supply the order number and description to the forwarding website, and they put it on their watchlist to show up in the next few days. They should email you when it arrives at their warehouse and then you have a week or two to select a forwarding shipping method and pay for it.
Dealing with the forwarding website should be straightforward as that's in English, but registration on the storefront, cart actions, checkout procedure, and email followups are going to be entirely up to you and translation software. I had run into a problem in the past where one of the items I ordered had gone out of stock and they emailed me, asking me to login and select whether to cancel the entire order or continue with the remaining items, and I didn't realize it for two weeks because I mistranslated or misunderstood the Japanese email. So you really need to know what you're doing and be comfortable translating Japanese to buy from a store.
Also watch out that a lot of these stores will show two prices: a buy and a sell price, or sometimes just a buy price alone. Don't get confused and click the buy link, telling the store you wish to sell them your item. You probably wont get too far before you see them prompting how to pay you upon receipt of item, but it can burst your bubble quickly if you think you're getting a super price for some rare item.
One potentially third option is to just tell someone who imports regularly from Japan, like me, what you're looking for, and perhaps something can be worked out to include it in a future shipment. I do this periodically for close friends of the website or forum. Moge and I often trade Suruga-ya orders. Sometimes he'll want something when I'm about to make a big purchase, or vice versa, and by combining our orders together, we're mutually saving on shipping. I would only do this for members who have established a pattern of long-term investment in this site through forum posting, or having made multiple purchases from the For Sale page. (Though the For Sale page does say special requests are open to anyone, this is typically restricted to Sogna/VIPER material.)
Regarding the ShoutBox post that started this thread, a PC98 computer isn't out of the question, but I'd need a YJA auction URL, or some specs and a budget to start with. My major concern is the weight, particularly for a desktop as opposed to a laptop, and how much this may impact shipping. But if budget isn't much of a concern I can help make it happen. I'd very much like to know how it goes myself as I've been considering a PC9801ES for museum purposes for some time now, but have been reluctant due to machine quality unknowns and the shipping cost worries. When I buy a VIPER game, I can usually see the disks or CD and be fairly sure of quality without reading any of the Japanese description, but less so with a computer. Having someone else take this leap of faith first would be fine with me.
