Right, I figure I'll do this as best I can right now, as it will probably be a month before my stuff gets here.
So I decided I needed one of those Cyber Sticks and some of the games that could use it, so I looked and looked and finally found one on Yahoo Japan auctions. Most of you will know that you can get stuff much cheaper on YJA, but the sellers usually don't ship overseas. I needed a proxy.
I read a rough guide made by some girl who used to import Final Fantasy stuff, and from her descriptions, I decided Shopping Mall Japan seemed like a safe, and relatively cheap bet. Since I was buying a big heavy joystick, I figured first I'm gonna get it posted surface mail, and second, might as well tack some other crap on, since the shipping wouldn't be much more. I found a big box Forgotten Worlds and a copy of Out Run, and purchases were made. I should add you have to pay a deposit of 20% of the value you think you'll spend. You can get that back after though.
Lesson 1 - no matter how cheap things appear, they will end up costing roughly the same
I cannot emphasise this enough. As others have said, this service is for things that are impossible to find outside of Japan. If you're looking to get a bunch of cheap games, just go to Hit Japan or something, it will wind up cheaper.
Shopping Mall Japan (SMJ) DO tell you that they add on a commission which starts at about $5 and rises with the price of the item. They didn't say that they would be adding a $3 handling fee for each item, but hey, now we're all the wiser to this hidden cost. Here's a list of what I bought, the price the seller got and the amount I paid:
Forgotten Worlds ------- 2760 jpy ------- $53.15
Out Run ---------------- 720 jpy -------- $23.10
Cyber Stick ------------ 3000 jpy ------- $71.80
If you do the math, that's roughly a 50% increase in price. Granted they started fairly cheap to begin with, but they end up being in line with eBay prices for the 2 games.
There is actually another service they offer which we should talk about that I have no experience - a "special order" is where you give them a big list of items and what you want to pay, and they will actually go out into the world and shop for you. That sounds expensive due to the effort, but they say if you wanted for example to buy a bunch of stuff from Rakuten, and it's just a matter of them ordering it, all at once, it probably doesn't have individual fees for each item. Of course Rakuten do offer internetional shipping at times, but they only do EMS. This might be something to try one time.
Anyway, when all of your stuff arrives in Japan, you pay off your tab and select shipping. Strangely, they seem to have shipped it and not charged me, so I don't know what's up with that - if it's included or if they'll charge me after. They still have a $15 deposit.
