Unfortunately, some sellers on Japanese auction and flea market sites may upload misleading or confusing listings that can easily cause misunderstandings for buyers.

To help our customers shop more safely, we created this guide to introduce some common examples of misleading listings and explain how to recognize them before making a purchase or placing a bid.

Common misleading listing

📢 In This Article:

What kind of misleading listings are being posted on these sites?

Here at One Map by FROM JAPAN, we want our customers to have a safe shopping experience so we regularly update these cautionary messages as reminders to customers before they make a bid or a purchase.

So when you open up a product listing on our JDirectItems Auction (Formerly: Yahoo! JAPAN Auction) page or Mercari JP page, at the top you will see some cautionary messages like this below.

Recently, we have noticed that there is a trend on JDirectItems Auction (Formerly: Yahoo! JAPAN Auction) and on Japan flea market sites such as Mercari and Rakuten Rakuma for sellers to use a photo for their listing that displays multiple items. But upon closer inspection of the description, it says that not all of the items are being sold but instead, only one / a portion of the items are available for purchase.

Below, you can see an example.

This listing uses a photo with multiple items displayed, so it can be easy to believe that upon purchasing, you will get all the items in the picture. 

However, in Japanese, the underlined section of the description (こちらの中段まん中のちいかわ寿司マスコットいくらのみの購入ページです。印をつけています) translates to: “This is the purchase page for only the Chiikawa Sushi Salmon Mascot in the middle of the middle row. It is marked in the image.”

But if you look at the image, the mark that they put is so small and hard to see! It’s very easy to miss and if you can’t read Japanese, then you won’t be able to know this.

Another example of misleading listings are those with numbers such as x25 written on the item name or on the product image, like in the example below.

It would be easy to believe that this means there are 25 pieces of that item being sold, however there have been cases where only 1 item is being sold and it’s the price of the item that’s increased 25 times and not the number of pieces included.

We would like to share an example of a misleading listing style that has recently started appearing on some auction and flea market platforms in Japan.

The product title advertised a 「100点セット」 (“100-piece set”) of anime goods and figures. However, when we received the order at our warehouse and inspected the items, we found that only 24 items were actually included.

It appears the seller may have intentionally used confusing wording. According to our Japanese team, the “100” (100点セット) may not have referred to the actual number of items included, but instead to an expression in Japanese similar to “100 points” or “perfect score.” While this may technically be considered wordplay, it can easily create misunderstandings for buyers expecting a much larger set.

Unfortunately, listings with vague or misleading descriptions like this can sometimes be found in “Bulk Lot (大量まとめ売り)” or assorted anime goods categories.

Before purchasing, we strongly recommend checking:

🔎 The full item description
🔎 Listing photos
🔎 The exact wording used in the title
🔎 The actual number of visible items shown in the images

If anything seems unclear before placing an order, please feel free to contact our Customer Support team. We can contact the seller before purchase to help confirm the exact number of items included, as well as any other listing details or concerns you may have. We are always happy to help you shop from Japan with greater confidence and peace of mind. 

How can I avoid purchasing from a mislead listing?

We recommend always checking the description listed on the product page before adding an item to your cart. 

To make this easier for you, One Map by FROM JAPAN has a handy automatic translation feature that you can make use of, shown below. Simply click the drop down button and find and select 英語 and the item description will be automatically translated for you.

In some cases, even after using the automatic translation feature, the translation might still end up confusing. This can be because these sellers purposefully write really long item descriptions or use difficult to understand sentences to make it harder for people to judge them. 

If the item description looks confusing on purpose, we recommend that you avoid purchasing this item. However, if you still want to continue with your purchase, please make sure to reach out to our Customer Service team first so that they can guide you before making your purchase.

Contact Our Customer Service

One Map by FROM JAPAN is working hard to ensure you have a safe and secure shopping experience

In addition to what we’ve talked about above, we’ve also published a few shopping guides for our customers so they can continue to safely shop when using One Map by FROM JAPAN – check them out below! 

We are planning to publish more guides like this in the future, so we hope you stay tuned for that & continue to enjoy your shopping experience with us!