Thought this would be a good place to ask this question.
People who use proxy services to get stuff from Japan: what are your tips? I’ve never used one. What service do you use? How do you keep shipping costs under control. Can you get a buch of auction wins combined into one shipment?
Sorry if these are obvious questions.
If it is more common stuff check Surugaya.com also. They have a pretty good selection and straightforward shipping. I haven’t done it with any of the new shipping or tarriff rules that have been implemented.
edit to add that they had FREE shipping weekends for the last year or so. Got some incredible deals and the ability to buy things that would otherwise be too costly. No joke I got two magazines shipped for free and they arrived like one week later
This may or may not be helpful but I stopped trying to be efficient, or game it nicely, and just used buyee because it’s easy enough. You can get multiple auction wins in one shipment, I think they hold stuff up to 10 days and then combine? Basically it all goes to their warehouse and then they pack it up.
But since ease is my primary concern I have (as @Sun_Crypt mentioned) just started using surugaya because they just do the price markup themselves (lol) and don’t have another third party involved. of course that does not help you with auctions!
I’ve been using buyee for about a year to get Saturn bits and found it great! Always ships very well protected and fast here. It’s actually 30 days they keep it for so I order multiple bits over a week, then when the last arrives I have plenty of time to not pay charges.
Only downside for me is import taxes. I always get stung on that, but when I order I’ve set myself a budget and include shipping and taxes in it.
I think it’s great if you’re buying a lot, but I’d never use it for odd items, as the costs would be huge!
Buyee holds stuff for 30 days! Then they’ll charge you like 100 yen per day per package after that until you combine and ship.
I recently made a pretty big Buyee order and it was really easy to do. You’re always gonna end up paying a bit of a premium with these services but their fees and stuff were reasonable, I thought. I’ve also used Treasure Japan before for sites that Buyee doesn’t handle and it’s a great service though a little more expensive with fees.
That url is wrong but still leads to very good website lol
I used to be someone who got almost all their clothes from like kmart (and I’m wearing a kmart t-shirt as I write this), but somehow I’ve become someone who buys a marron veston de travail en laine burel from France:
AKA, a coarse woolen brown work jacket (I am unlikely to do any work in it). I saw someone wearing one of these online and wanted it despite having no real need for it, and now I have it and I love it. It’s 100% undyed wool (from brown sheep, I guess), very thick, quite scratchy, really warm, smells a bit like sheep (this is already fading since I got it out of the shipping package) and the tags which I can’t actually read seem to be making a fuss about how it’s entirely made in France as opposed to those other brands who assemble in France but do most of the work overseas. My partner recently accused me of becoming a dandy and she may be right.
I went back and forwards on sizing for this - I’m usually either XL or XXL for jackets, with XL being a bit short in the arm and tight at the neck but XXL being huge around the belly, but I’d heard this particular jacket tended to be oversize so you can layer under it. Also the cheapest place I could find selling them was out of stock in 2X. I think the XL was the right choice in the end. It fits pretty well at the shoulder and neck, the sleeves are long enough, and the belly is a bit big so who knows how the XXL would have been. I don’t think I’ll be able to layer comfortably underneath but the part of Australia where I live is unlikely to ever get cold enough that I would want to anyway. I also wasn’t sure about the red buttons but they’re a bit more subtle in person than they look in the photos.
As per usual, this took about four days to get form Europe to Sydney and well over a week to get from there to my city.
lol that’s what I get for not copying and pasting
Another couple of games in the collection. I wonder if I should get into Azure Dreams. Played a lot of the PS1 version back in 98 but it seems that the GBC version is missing the city building and the dating elements.
Since the Satiator has been on sale and someone in the area wanted to get rid of their Saturn, things look aligned to finally dive in to the catalog. You guys were right, this Satiator made it SO EASY. I’m a fan of the nerds candy packaging of the device!
One thing I was surprised to see is that the 3d controllers are pretty pricey on eBay. Is there a better place to find used controllers nowadays?
I put about 20 hours into Azure Dreams GBC and had a perfectly ok time. It’s pretty playable as a random room dungeon crawler, but the monster raising side was not that interesting. I’ll finish it one day!
I have been quite obsessed with Mystery Dungeon/Japanese Roguelikes lately. My research ended up with me purchasing this game from the internet auction site at a very reasonable price:
I know virtually nothing. Just saw some screenshots. Quite excited. It’s incredible to me that this game got localized at the time.
Druaga means nothing to me aside from it being a Japanese RPG classic. I wonder if my lack of familiarity with the original will matter.
it’s good! Make sure to turn off your console when you’re on the death screen for a surprise on restarting
Got my Raspberry Pi from @WanderWhist yesterday. Thanks!!! Took me 15 min of setup to get it to load ps2 games via network sharing. Would recommend. (don’t mind how messy and dusty everything is on that pic hehe)
It’s really easy
Just received this after @exodus called it “the best game in the 32x” in last week’s episode. Hope it lives up to the hype.
All things are relative! I hope you have fun with it though.
It’s quite original, isn’t it? I can’t call it the best game in the 32x when there’s that awesome Virtua Racing port, but I liked it!
These guides for the older Shiren the Wanderers and Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon arrived. I wanted them to reference as I make my own Mystery Dungeon-inspired games. The art is really wonderful and having breakdowns of items and maps and art are very helpful for studying.
Sounds awesome!! I’ve wondered for a long time why we don’t see many indies borrowing this formula. Such an intrinsically fun format that we all just sit around and wait for one single company to give us more of. Hope you’ll share yours around here once they’re finished. Oh, and those manuals look awesome too, lol
