Online shopping in Japan

Tokyo is actually a very big city with loads of places to go and things to see and food to eat. After 3 parts of shopping postings, I want to talk about online shopping in Japan.

To many travellers, Tokyo is really a shopping paradise. No matter what style of clothes you like, or food you like, there is always some place that you can find the thing you want. Many travellers come to Tokyo and want to buy electronic items such as cameras, digital cameras, computers, PDAs, and even big items such as 57" LCD TVs. As a consumer, of course you want to put the item in hand or physically see the time before you make the purchase but many of the travellers don't realize how much they are actually paying for the shop rental costs as well as the marketing costs in the prices of the items that they pay. Of couse, you have to also think about the flight ticket cost and accomodation cost that you have to pay to physically come to Tokyo.

Online shopping is very much developed in Japan (well, of course, online shopping in Korea is actually much much more developed than Japan). Of course there are shops that are not reliable and may scam you but according to my many online shopping experience, it is quite safe to make purchases online in Japan. I have made many purchases through online shops as well as yahoo auctions. So far, I am very satisfied with all of them and have not been scammed (maybe lucky....)

I guess the major advantage of online shopping is of course the price. Sometimes, even big shops such as Bic Camera, Yodobashi Camera etc cannot offer cheaper prices than the online shops. I have purchased a digital camera online with 10% less than Yodobashi Camera. Also, contact lens solution at 20% less than Matsumoto Kiyoshi.

One website that I always use for online shopping is www.kakaku.com. This is a website that compares prices of many online shops of same item and model. This is very good tool for electronic items purchases. www.hikaku.com is also a similar website.

Of course, there are the famous website www.rakuten.co.jp as well as www.yahoo.co.jp for shopping and bidding. You will find that auctions usually have a cheaper price than rakuten shops but of course the risk of bidding is higher than buying through rakuten online shops since the counterpart of the bidding is usually individuals.

One special website that I also want to recommend is www.jpshopnavi.com . They are a forwarding company and it is good for those who are residing overseas and want to purchase japanese items. Many online shops do not ship overseas and therefore, this forwarding service is needed.