Recommended Online VGM Shops

Oh, and also jb, what's Kahori?

Man in the Desert wrote:

Stephen wrote:

Nice list Mr. Desert, but how many of those have you used?

I've used CDJapan(bought the very last Cowboy Bebop Limited Edition OST Box Set they had)
Animenation
Anime Corner Store
Amazon
VGM
Otokichi Premium
Yahoo Japan Auctions(through Rinkya)

All of the rest are back-up plans/"looking for the absolute cheapest price and I'm willing to sift though all of these to find it". 



Hey, jb, how did you order from Amazon Japan?  I tried once and when I got to the address part(where to send it), my address had to be Japan.  Erm......what'd I do wrong?

There's a button or link you press to input an International Address.

jb wrote:

I order everything from amazon japan, and if they don't have something (very rare they don't have it), it's probably a special order Kahori has.  I don't like to order from Kahori because EMS shipping is completely random.  I ordered Breath of Fire box and Sailing to the World Piano in separate orders.  Breath of Fire took a day to get to my house.  Sailling to the World still hasn't gotten here.   EMS shipping is just generally unreliable so I tend not to go with sites that have EMS shipping as their fastest available (CDJapan, Kahori).  She's unmatched in promotional sales, hard to find special orders and the cool "her site only" stuff, though, so sometimes I have no choice

I'm not sure why you have shipping problems with EMS.  I've never had any issues with EMS shipping from Japan.  The only significant place where irregularities occur is customs.

It's a bit strange with Amazon.jp. I bought some Sonic CDs and the shipping will begin the coming week.. but they haven't made any steps for charging my creditcard.

I ordered the Sonic Adventure OST and both Sonic Heroes CDs. Could it be because the SA OST will be reprinted and they waiting for its delivery? Honestly I don't know what's going on...

Lucy wrote:

It's a bit strange with Amazon.jp. I bought some Sonic CDs and the shipping will begin the coming week.. but they haven't made any steps for charging my creditcard.

My understanding is that many Japanese companies wait until the end of the month to charge credit cards. In fact, I've had some companies wait up to 3 months before charging me.

Herrkotowski wrote:

I almost exclusively use CDJapan. I don't mind paying extra for EMS shipping, especially when I get most CDs I preorder on or before the actual release date. Heck, I got Forest of Glass on the release date and Soma Bringer on March 31st! Go figure!

HMV has much cheaper shipping rates, especially when ordering multiple CDs. The only downside is that they arguably don't pack with as much care as CDJapan. Still, I haven't yet had any cracked CD cases from HMV.

HMV also has a better point system. At HMV you'd have to spend 50000 yen for a 2500 yen discount. If you spent 50000 yen at CDJapan you would only get a 1500 yen discount. Additionally, HMV often offers double points on CDs, so theoretically you could get a 2500 yen discount on a 25000 yen order. On the other hand, CDJapan does offer 500 yen coupons on your birthday and usually at least one other time a year.

It is worth noting that CDJapan has extremely good customer support. I used CDJapan exclusively for years, and they were always very  accomodating if and when I had problems.

Carl wrote:

If you find yourself in Akihabara, I have two words to remember:
Super. Potato.

So true.  It's one of my absolute favorite stops in Akihabara.  Interestingly, the floor with the game music is actually quite new.  It was only there for my last year or so in Japan, if not the last six months.  Another great place to look for game music CDs would be Liberty.  There are at least three of their locations in Akihabara that sell game music, and I found some decent stuff there.  If anybody's ever going to be heading to Japan, I can give more specific directions to find stuff, assuming all the stores I liked remain open (loads of changes in that area lately... I mourned the loss of my favorite new game/music store, Yamagiwa Soft).

That said, why are we talking about these in an online vgm shop thread?

I'm interested in buying an OST from Amazon Japan. I'd be buying it used from the Marketplace, though (so, from a user and not Amazon itself). From those who have shopped there before, is there any way to guard against receiving bootlegs? One step would be to only order from sellers with near-100% feedback, I'd imagine, but there's still a chance of receiving bootlegs, no?

Also, so far I've tried checking out with two different sellers, and once I put in my address (using the International Address page) it said they didn't couldn't ship to my address. Is it hard to find sellers who ship to America?

Any other tips for buying on Amazon Japan would be appreciated.

EDIT: Also, I'm trying to determine if some of the sellers are selling this disc only. When I run the seller comments through translation websites, I often see "no band," "no belt," or "with a belt." Does "no band" mean it doesn't have the case (it's disc only)? And with a band/belt means it comes with the case?

Here's the product page with the different sellers offering it, btw. Sorry if I'm asking too many questions here, but this is my first time doing something like this.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/offer-listin … f=dp_olp_2

Last edited by Drakken (May 06, 2008)

Carl wrote:

I haven't tried buying from other amazon USERS, but would estimate it could cause problems since the seller likely isn't expecting an international buyer.

Well on Amazon US you can select to ship international or not (and have to proactively check it for yes). I assume it's the same way in Japan -- so it theoretically shouldn't cause problems as it's up to the seller in the first place (i.e. Amazon won't let you buy if the seller didn't check it)


-Joshua

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to let everyone know of a good seller on Amazon.co.jp Marketplace.

ジャックフロストのおもちゃ箱　 (´・ｗ・｀）ノ
Jack Frost's Toybox
http://mkpl.jp/seller/A1JKV5Y7UY12F2/

The seller there, Ikuo has many game CDs at reasonable prices (At least reasonable to me when you have to buy through a middle-man). More importantly, he ships overseas!

I've also found that a small number of Japanese sellers will ship overseas. If you find one you like, you can put their store name into http://mkpl.jp/ and a list of all their items may pop up.

Just thought everyone might want to know!