I'm planning to buy some goods from Japan soon, and I'm hoping to get some advice from anyone who has experience on any of the many shipping services available. The items I'm planning to get are some clothes and some snacks and I'm hoping to get a big box worth of goods but I'm worried it would be too expensive and I would have to stick to just one or two items. I'd appreciate any advice on the best service to use and maybe some helpful tips on some of the decisions I'll have to make.
I would suggest usingLog In. It's a proxy shopping service that would buy the items for you in your stead. They have a fixed 200 yen commission per item, with a max of 800 yen commission per shop (meaning, they'll only charge commission on the first 4 items you buy. After that, you can keep adding stuff and there's no commission fee anymore). Do note that you're also paying for domestic shipping (i.e. shipping from the shop to the proxy service's warehouse in Japan), so be wary of how many items you're getting and how heavy it'll become in the long run. They have a 30-day keeping time where they can accumulate the stuff you've bought within 30 days of arrival at their warehouse. They're really efficient and they allow bidding at Yahoo Auctions, too, if you're into that.Log In.
If you live in the United States, shipping shouldn't be too much of an additional cost from Japan. However, if you do need to pinch those extra pennies, I would suggest FromJapan. It's a really wonderful site to save on those commission fees.
