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Japan is a country full of unique culture which has naturally spawned tons of interesting, unique and high quality products. Can you buy from Japan if you’re overseas? The short answer is yes, but…
There are a few issues with attempting to buy items that are exclusive to the Japanese domestic market, especially when it comes to shopping on Japanese websites.
There a number of pitfalls and problems to navigate when you’re Japanese website shopping which can often make it seem impossible to buy things from Japan.
Fret not, ZenMarket are here to guide you through the process of Japan shopping online, to help you become an expert in buying from Japan. In this article, we’ll help you understand the pitfalls of Japan online shopping, and show you how you can avoid them to make it possible to get the items you want from Japan.
Pitfall #1 – Language Barriers
For Japanese people living overseas, or people who have studied and learned Japanese to a high level, this is not such a big issue, but for the rest of us it makes the simple task of reading and understanding product descriptions a real challenge.
Also, for many items that have been introduced to Japan in modern times, Japanese people have adopted foreign names for them, but sadly the meaning has not always been preserved.
Perhaps the most famous example of this is the word pants. In English, we use the word “pants” to refer to bottoms or trousers that typically go down to the ankle, but in Japanese the word “pantsu” specifically refers to underpants. This type of problem occurs for a number of different products across many industries.
While this may seem a somewhat minor problem, it becomes more prevalent when attempting to shop Japanese websites.
There are two points where you will typically encounter language issues when shopping Japan online. They are the website itself and the customer support.
Japanese Website Language
The first problem you will encounter when shopping Japanese online stores, is that as you could expect, the websites are all written in Japanese.
This can make simply navigating the website itself difficult as you will be unable to find different product categories or sections of the website. In addition if there are any specific details you need to be aware of, you need to be able to understand them to ensure that you know exactly what you are ordering.
For example, if you wanted to buy from Amazon Japan, you might need to see if the material of the item you are ordering is what you want. It may also be beneficial to know details such as the size, dimensions, weight, or even color, which may not be immediately apparent without reading through the nitty-gritty product details.
There is also the question of the product or seller’s reviews – if these are written in Japanese you could miss out on some important details that could help you in making an informed purchase decision.
On top of the product details, you also have to be aware of the estimated shipping time, the shipping cost, and returns details that could impact the time it takes for you to receive items.
Because all this information is in Japanese, it may be difficult to make an informed purchase decision without first having the Japanese website translated to English.
Customer Support Language
The second issue you will run into is that if you have a question about an item or have a problem with delivery or shipping, unless you know Japanese, you will have no way of liaising with the Japanese online store’s customer support.
Japanese customer support is seldom available in English for industries not pertaining to Japanese tourism, and many Japanese companies are very rigid when it comes to policies and communication.
If you were to automatically translate a Japanese website into English using some kind of translation software or tool, the information displayed to you may not be 100% accurate, but when reading this you would understand why (because you initiated the translation).
If the Japanese customer support received an automatically translated email or message however, they may not be able to correctly discern what it is you are asking, and may not provide a correct response.
If you do manage to accurately ask a question to customer support, over-politeness will be heavily injected into the repsonse and you will be greeted with a wall of keigo (polite language used to speak to customers, elders, and people with higher social status) and greetings, for a simple answer such as “Yes”.
This can often make it time consuming and difficult to discern whether your request or question was adequately answered, particularly if you use a translation tool to change the response to English too, as the keigo can occasionally confuse the AI, depending on the phrases being used, which can often lead to even more confusion.
For marketplaces such as Amazon, to have support in every language on every website version may not be a viable business model, so it may not be possible to access Amazon Japan English customer service while there are multiple English versions of their site elsewhere (Australia, UK, USA for example).
Pitfall #2 – Payment Methods
You may not have noticed when shopping in your home country that there tends to always be the same set of payment methods available at stores and online shopping sites. For customers residing in the United States, these will usually be something like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and maybe one or two other payment methods.
Have you even been frustrated when you wanted to use your American Express card but the store would not accept it?
Online shopping in Japan is like this except in many cases, none of your payment methods will work. The reason behind this is because cash is still the most preferred Japan payment method, with adoption of card only becoming more widespread in recent times due to a huge push by the Japanese government.
For Japanese residents shopping online in Japan, Japan payment methods tend to include COD, pay at a convenience store, as well as wallet-based apps such as LINE Pay, Rakuten Pay and PayPay.
Foreign residents however, are usually not so lucky, as these applications usually require either one or both of the following:
- A Japanese residential address (more on this later)
- A link to a Japanese credit card
Also, it is probably obvious but COD is not available outside of Japan as the courier would have to deliver the parcel to a foreign country, receive the Yen payment in cash, then take that cash back to Japan. Not going to happen.
While your Visa and Mastercard payments may still be possible at some vendors, many will attempt to filter out fraudulent activity by only enabling payments via a Japanese credit card. In other words, your credit card from outside Japan will not work in many cases.
If they do allow you to pay by card, there are also issues raised by the security departments of foreign banks. Your bank may not usually be used to seeing your card being charged by a Japanese biller, and may choose to block the payment to prevent fraudulent transactions.
You can often get around this by authorizing the payment and supplying identification, but it is something you ought to be aware of, particularly if buying time sensitive or limited release items.
Pitfall #3 – Shipping
Everything else is so difficult that shipping my items should be easy, right? RIGHT?! Wrong.
In eCommerce, usually you simply input your shipping address and once you complete the check out process your items will be shipped to there. Japanese domestic eCommerce usually functions in the same way, except the structure of their addresses tend to be a little different.
For starters, properties on streets are numbered but are not in order in most cases, and rather than street names, in Japan they have block numbers. See the image below:
This means that additional information needs to be provided to ensure that couriers and post people can deliver items to the correct location. This makes most foreign addresses incompatible with the shipping component of Japanese online store eCommerce systems.
Additionally, these same systems usually have some kind of validation code in play, which means the text you type into the shipping forms need to fit a certain templated format. Unfortunately, this usually means no English characters other than numbers, which means everything from your name, all the way down to your building name must be written in either Hiragana, Katakana or even Kanji.
Save yourself some time on the translation though, as it is unlikely that Japanese online shopping stores want to deal with the hassle of foreign addresses and international in the first place, and usually limit their services to Japan addresses for shipping shipping only.
Domestic-Only Shipping
Amazon Japan won’t ship to my address! :'(
The above just about says it all. Only domestic shipping is available in most cases. Japan being an island nation, can only ship within its borders using only one means of transportation. If shipping items to any country or region outside of Japan, at least one more shipping method is required as the order will have to be shipped by either air or sea, which can add significant costs for regular eCommerce merchants.
Similar to Japanese payment methods, there are many unique and convenient shipping methods for the Japanese shipping including chakubarai (COD), pick up at a convenience store, parcel locker (PUDO), as well as the regular delivery to your door, which usually requires you to be there to receive it or you risk receiving the Japanese equivalent of the despised “Sorry, we missed you” card.
Needless to say, most of these shipping methods require you to be present to receive the parcel and most of the Japanese logistics networks only ship within Japan, meaning you often cannot get items delivered to you directly.
You then have the same issue with the language barrier except with shipping companies instead of the Japanese online retailer.
While there are some sections of the Japan Post website available in English, it is unlikely you will be able to reach Japan Post English customer service. This is even less likely for regions outside of Japan that don’t use English.
International Shipping & Customs
Another level of complexity with shipping parcels overseas are the customs fees, as well as restrictions as to what can and cannot be shipped into your country.
Most Japanese retailers do not have the time to look up the various restrictions for each country and after considering all the hoops they have to jump through in order to ship their products overseas, ultimately decide that they are better of just focusing the same effort on targeting their home markets.
If you want to ship fashion items from Japan to the US for example, you may find that items made from certain silk materials such as kimono, cannot be shipped using certain couriers such as FedEx unless very specific documents are provided by the manufacturer.
Obtaining these documents adds an extra hurdle to Japanese companies as they not only have to get the documents, but are also left with the burden of translating them for the US customs office. This adds costs that they do not have to worry about in the Japanese Domestic Market, as well as potential legal issues if there is a mistake in the translation. It could also be damaging to their reputation if customers parcels are constantly getting stuck in customs.
Establishing a contract with a different courier is a big task to ask of an online store in Japan that only ships a few parcels overseas each year.
How to avoid these pitfalls
Thankfully there is a very simple solution to avoid most of these pitfalls. You need a proxy buying service for Japan.
ZenMarket is a proxy buying service. We identified that many foreign customers want access to the all of the amazing products that are available in the Japanese domestic market, but have no means of buying them. We have been shipping Japanese made products internationally for almost 10 years, so we know the ins and outs of buying stuff from Japan.
Do you have a ZenMarket account?
What is a proxy buying service?
A proxy buying service is a company that exists in Japan and serves as a middleman for all the purchases you wish to make. Using a proxy buying service enables you to buy items from virtually any Japanese store you can find, shipping them to the company’s warehouse, then when you’re ready, have the items shipped from the proxy’s warehouse to your door.
How do proxy buying services work?
For a quick overview, watch the following video. For more detail continue reading.
Simply put, you contact us and the proxy buyer will purchase the item on your behalf, and have it shipped to a warehouse in Japan, then the items will be shipped from the warehouse to you.
Shop millions of items from thousands of Japanese stores with ZenMarket
How do Proxy Buying Services Solve the language problem
The Website Language Problem
It depends on the specific Japanese proxy shopping service. With ZenMarket, you can shop millions of Japanese products on our website directly by using the marketplace APIs for Rakuten Japan, Rakuma (formerly known as Fril.jp), Yahoo! Shopping Japan, Amazon Japan, and even bid using Yahoo! Auctions Japan. You can access all of these from our website simply clicking their tab at the top of our website. We are always looking to expand our service, so the list of stores built into the ZenMarket website is continuing to grow.
Because our website translates the content automatically, you are able to view Japanese websites in English. See links to our built-in sites below for your convenience:
What if I want an item not built into your website?
Great question. For this, you have two options:
Option 1: Use the find it for me tool
Using the find it for me tool, you describe what it is you are looking for and our customer support will use the knowledge at their disposal to find what it is that you are after. This is particularly useful for broad searches such as if you were wanting to order instant ramen, or a certain brand or item type, and aren’t too fussed with exact model that you are going to get (for example if you wanted a Hitachi rice cooker, or a brown Dior bag).
If you are looking for something particularly niche that is outside the expertise of our support staff, it may be best to use option 2.
Option 2: Provide a product page link
If you have a specific item you are looking for and you cannot find it on the ZenMarket website, you can still buy it. How? If you provide a product page URL for the item you want, our staff can navigate to the site and purchase it for you after checking its price and availability.
This means you will have to find the item you want on the Japanese online store where the product is. This can be difficult at times, but if you need help, check out our tips on how to find Japanese products without knowing Japanese. Following the tips in this guide, you will be able to view Japanese websites in English, or at least be able to find the items you are looking for.
Once you have found the product URL, copy it and paste it into the search bar on the ZenMarket website and follow the prompts.
Here’s a list of popular stores that you can buy from with ZenMarket!
Shop virtually any store in Japan from overseas with ZenMarket
The Customer Service Language Problem
ZenMarket has bilingual customer support in over 17 languages. If you need to ask a seller a question, or have issues with the quality or authenticity of an item, we can ask the seller questions on your behalf. ZenMarket is available in the following languages:
Simply send us the question you would like to ask in your language and we will translate it into Japanese for you, then send the translated version to the seller. Because the question is translated by real people who are native and bilingual speakers, we will know if nuances in what you are asking in your language carry over to Japanese, rather than translations made by a machine.
This keeps the Japanese sellers happy as they can conduct customer service as usual in Japanese, as well as makes it easier for buyers as they can be confident that the questions they are asking, and the answers to them, are being relayed accurately.
Access ZenMarket’s Super Service Team via your account. No account?
How do Proxy Buying Services Solve the Payment Method Problem
Because proxy buying services are purchasing items from Japanese stores on your behalf, you don’t need to pay the store directly. Becasue proxy buying services typically serve a customer base that resides entirely outside of Japan, they are usually set up to accept foreign payment methods.
Because the proxy service itself is in Japan however, they have access to all the payment methods necessary to purchase the items you want.
ZenMarket has tons of payment methods available and accepts virtually any currency. The current available payment methods are Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Maestro, Diners, JCB, and other card types (facilitated securely via Stripe), as well as PayPal, AliPay, Skrill, Wise (lowest deposit fee), SWIFT bank transfer, local bank transfer, and cryptocurrency payments via CoinGate.
With so many payment options available, you can pay how you want to pay.
We also handle currency conversions and give you the freedom of choosing the payment method that gives you the best exchange rate.
One more benefit of ZenMarket is our loyalty program and credit system. Once you ship a certain number of parcels, you will receive a credit balance that you can use to buy and bid that only needs to be paid off once you go to ship your items. This enables you to shop more freely and quickly. The credit amount varies based on the number of parcels you have shipped in the last 12 months.
Add funds to your ZenMarket account now and start shopping Japan
How do Proxy Buying Services Solve the Shipping Problem
The domestic only shiping problem is simple – Japanese proxy shopping sites are Japanese businesses. In other words, they have a Japanese shipping address. Because of this, Japanese stores have no issues sending orders to proxy shopping services.
ZenMarket has three warehouses in Osaka to receive all kinds of items from all over Japan. You don’t even need to remember the addresses because when you order through us, we will put the address for the warehouse best suited for your order without you having to lift a finger.
International Shipping & Customs
This is where we really shine. Proxy buying services typically establish distribution channels for parcels to regions where their customers reside. Once an item arrives at our warehouse from the Japanese site, we can then assist you with international shipping.
ZenMarket have a number of couriers and postal methods at our disposal and what to make it so that our service can be there for anyone who wants to purchase items from Japan from anywhere in the world.
Consolidate your order and save!
International shipping can be a little pricey depending on the speed of the courier, or the destination country. The cost for shipping each item could be relatively low when shipping individual items, but if you are shipping multiple items one at a time, these costs quickly add up. For this reason, ZenMarket allow you to combine multiple parcels so that they can be shipped together, ultimately saving you money on shipping.
For example, if you were to ship two items separately and they cost $15 to ship each, the total would be $30. If you combine them together however, the cost of shipping a single slightly larger parcel may cost around $20 resulting in a saving of $10. This system ensures you get the best bang for your buck on your international shipping costs.
Free Warehouse Storage – 45 days!
Even better, you can combine orders purchased from multiple stores – impossible without a proxy buying service. To ensure you have time for all your items to arrive at our warehouse and organize international shipping, ZenMarket has 45 days of free storage at our warehouse.
Customs Charges & Restrictions
If you were ordering from a Japanese store, they may not want to deal with the hassle of customs for the rare order that comes from overseas but this is the specialty of a Japan shopping proxy. We offer advice on what can and cannot be shipped to your country to prevent your items being rejected by customs.
If there are special custom requirements for shipping from Japan to US, we will make sure you do not purchase items that contradict these requirements.
Suppose you wanted to buy parts from Japan for your car, but the USA import restrictions prevent you from shipping tires, we will prevent you from purchasing tires from Japan as it will get rejected at customs, costing you money for disposal without the possiblity of ever receiving your items.
We offer this advice before you make a purchase to prevent you throwing away your hard earned money, and to give your parcels the best chance of a safe, smooth and fast delivery process.
Does shipping from Japan to USA go through customs?
Yes. All parcels that cross borders from one country into another need to be cleared by the local customs office to ensure safety during the delivery process, maintain biosecurity and protect local industries where applicable.
When your package is ready to be shipped, we will fill out any customs declaration forms for you so that your parcel is accurate for your local customs office, ensuring legal compliance and increasing the likelihood that your parcels go through customs without a hitch.
For eligible parcels bound for Europe, ZenMarket also has an IOSS/DDP system in place to pre-pay customs charges.
What are you waiting for?
Website Suggestions and How-To’s
So now that you know the benefits of using a Japanese proxy website when ordering from Japan, it is time to start shopping. ZenMarket has put together a list of recommended stores and tutorials for buying stuff from Japan websites. See below:
How to Buy From Japan
Marketplaces
Anime / Manga Merch & Cosplay
Games / Fan & Character Merch
Fashion / Cosmetics
Home & Outdoor Equipment
While we have many store and product tutorials available, the process for ordering from any of these stores is more or less the same:
- Find the item you want
- Get the purchase URL to ZenMarket customer support
- Item gets checked for availability, shipability and price
- You pay for the item
- Item gets shipped to ZenMarket warehouse
- You pay for international shipping
- Item gets shipped to you
You can apply this order process to other stores too! See popular Japanese shops here.
If ever you need assistance, feel free ask support. Simply log in to your ZenMarket account and use the messaging tab to get in touch.
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