For some reason eBay has never made it to Japan. Instead, Yahoo! Auctions Japan is the place to go if you are looking for that rare Akira Kurosawa item, or the latest manga and anime releases.

Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to bid on Japan Auctions if you don’t live in the country. Most sellers only ship to Japan, and money is more often than not transferred via domestic bank transactions, which you obviously cannot do if you don’t have a Japanese bank account. There can be a language barrier there, too, unless you know Japanese.

All is not lost, however. There are a handful of Internet services that make it possible for a foreigner to take part in Yahoo Auctions. What they do is bid for you, and handle all transactions with the seller for you. What you normally pay is the item price + commission + shipping in japan + shipping to you. Commission rates vary, and usually go up with the price of the item.

All services ask you to send in deposits before bidding (either the amount you are bidding, or half of it, or something). All accept credit cards, some also offer PayPal.

Now, I must mention that I have actually not used any of these myself: I only found out about the existence of these services now, as I was trying to find a way to bid on an item. Now, I must mention that I have only very limited experience with these companies, having only tried Shopping Mall Japan with one item. (A classic French cinema item, actually. The Japanese have all sorts of rarities of French cinema circulating, which are not available in Europe.)

Here are the bidding services that I have been able to find and read about. Please do further research before you decide to subscribe to any of them. While I have done my best to have the information presented here as up-to-date and correct as possible at the time of writing, there may be mistakes in there. I take no responsibility for them, whatsoever.

Rinkya
- Real time bidding (i.e. they bid instantly when you notify them)
- Minimum $15 commission fee, 25% handling fee (and rather expensive handling); in just about every way more expensive than the others, unless you are buying something for around 40,000 Yen and higher.
- Very few complaints, other than the prices
- They cannot combine items from the same seller, but do combine overseas shipping
- Many use Rinkya just to surf the Auctions, as they have a relatively good translator service

CELGA
- Minimum $5 commission fee, plus $2 bank transfer fee; relatively inexpensive
- Some complaints about the person running the service (arrogance noted by a handful, passionately denied by others; basically the issue seems to be that Celga has zero-tolerance for trouble-makers, and will kick out customers who are late with payments or don’t understand the Terms of Service)
- No real-time bidding: they recommend that you notify them about your bids at least 24 hours before the auction ends, as that is what it can take them to actually do the bidding
- If two Celga customers are bidding for the same item, they handle it on a first-come-first-served basis (i.e. no bidding wars between Celga users are possible)
- Can and do combine international shipment, wherever possible. Not able to hold items for long periods of time, however.
- Also handles transactions from bidders.co.jp, auction.msn.co.jp, and auctions.co.jp (each of them much smaller than Yahoo Auctions Japan)
- Is ready to note a smaller amount to the package than its actual value, in order to avoid you having to pay import tax (but this will also affect the insurance accordingly)

Shopping Mall Japan
- Minimum commission fee $5, $2.50 bank transfer fee
- Real-time bidding
- Relatively fast in delivery
- You can hold items for longer periods of time (up to three months), and ask them to be shipped in one package. Note that as a non-US customer, you need to notify them that you want the items to be kept in Japan until shipped to you.

Personal experience with Shopping Mall Japan: After writing the original post I decided to try Shopping Mall Japan, mainly because they seemed quite fast (I was in a hurry) and cheaper than Rinkya or CELGA). The service itself was indeed fast and helpful, but what was the greatest surprise was the speed of the shipping. The item, sent from Japan, reached me in under a week after I had asked them to ship it. The postage was somewhat pricey, but when I saw the packaging I understood why: it came with a plastic “suitcase” -like cover, with the item itself wrapped in bubble wrap inside of it. Most probably nothing short of a nuclear attack could have damaged my item! Although this is my only experience with Shopping Mall Japan, I don’t at the moment see any reason to try the others any time soon.

Anime Dep
- Minimum $8 commission fee
- No real-time bidding
- Although recommended by a number of people, the website does not look very professional, and has quite little information

Akibado
- More shipping options than with the others
- On the cheaper side
- I haven’t really found much talk about them, so Akibado is still sort of a question mark

Crescent Shop
- I haven’t really found anything about them yet

The long and short of it is that Rinkya, Celga and Shopping Mall Japan are the ones most people seem to go with. If 5-10 dollars extra per purchase is not a problem, Rinkya seems to be the best one. From the two others, Shopping Mall Japan looks like the one I would personally go with, as they have instant bidding and don’t have many negative reviews. It is also cheaper than Rinkya, yet seems friendly and competent.