As you continue to support your favourite singer/band/group, you will eventually reach a point where you might want to buy their merchandise / goods. But how do you do that while not in Japan?
Official Websites
Of course the first option would be to buy from the official website especially if they offer overseas delivery:
- LiSA
https://www.lxixsxa.com/shop/
(This includes her fashion label “ROY reflect overjoy” and most of her official concert goods that are still in stock) - YOASOBI
https://yoasobi-onlinestore.com
E-Commerce Sites
Amazon JP / Amazon USA / Amazon SG (#Ad)
Most new music CDs/DVDs/Blu-ray and photobooks would be available at Amazon.
Surprisingly, when I did a search for merchandise (グッズ), there were some older goods available too. However, you can see that some of these are resale items and some are even people selling free concert ribbons so you will need to carefully read the description before purchasing (if you get the free 30-days of Amazon Prime as well before you buy anything, you might be able to get free delivery too).
Address Setting / Forwarding Services
For the Amazon search above, you would also need to note that your search results would be limited by the address that you set for delivery. Of course, for Japanese artistes, Amazon JP and delivering to a Japanese address would give the best results. You can always sign up for forwarding service like Tenso (which is fully in English and easy to sign up) so that it delivers to a warehouse in Japan first before shipping to you overseas for a fee. It can accumulate a few things together before shipping to you to save costs too.
Another one I frequently use which is a hybrid kind of site is CDJapan since it is fully in English, allows for easy shipping overseas and also has a good selection of music/anime related items. It does pre-orders and also proxy shopping so it can cater for both. Just make sure you order a few more things at once so that the shipping costs can be spread over multiple items.
Proxy Shopping
If you clicked into either of the official artiste shops above, you would notice that they tied up with Buyee to allow for overseas delivery so it shouldn’t be a problem (other than expensive shipping costs). However, what happens if you are searching for older merch that might be out of stock? Technically, you would buy from 2nd hand marketplaces and Proxy Shopping / Proxy Buying is the way to go. Companies such as Buyee does it for you and covers the main ones such as Yahoo!Japan and Mercari. I understand it used to be able to buy from the Japan site Suruga-ya (駿河屋) as well but seems no longer available when I tried to enter the URL below to try. I suspect that since shops such as Suruga-ya / アニメイト (Animate) has their own international site, they prefer you use that directly
A word of caution though that buying off second hand marketplaces, regardless of whether it is through proxy or not, would still be subject to risk of some damage which is worse than described.
From the example screenshot above from Mercari, to check the condition of the product before purchase, you can refer to the photos attached on the left side and also the “Product Condition (商品の状態)”:
- 新品、未使用 = Brand new, unused
- 未使用に近い = Almost unused
- 目立った傷や汚れなし = No noticeable scratches or stains
- やや傷や汚れあり = Some scratches or stains
I am not sure if the condition gets any worse than this, but for me usually the worst I would accept would be 目立った傷や汚れなし. After you confirmed that it is what you want, then you can just directly click the button to buy using Buyee.
There are way more methods/shops/proxy options etc which I cannot cover all here, but hope you have fun searching the treasure trove of artistes goods on the internet. It might be a hit or miss journey, but the excitement whenever you find something rare or something you wanted for ages (especially at a bargain) is really addictive. Good luck.