New to One Map or to proxy services?
Make sure to check out our first article in this series first, which you can find here to learn all about the basics! If you’ve already gone through that, then let’s proceed with what you came here to know!
What shops and items can I find on One Map?
Before you start searching for what you want, it’s handy to know what you can expect to find on One Map first. We have a wealth of shops and item options, so understanding what the different shops on our site are, what they have available, and which shop we recommend for which types of items will make it easier to know what you can buy even if you don’t know anything about Japanese or American online shops and auctions.
To start with, we have three services offered, FROM JAPAN, Right Now on eBay Proxy Auctions, and FROM USA. FROM JAPAN, as you might have guessed, includes a wide variety of Japanese online stores and auctions. Right Now on eBay is for bidding on items that appear on eBay, the USA’s largest online auction site. FROM USA is our proxy shopping service that you can use when you want to buy from USA online stores.
Introduction to One Map Shops and What You Can Find from Each Shop
Shopping Sites
Shopping sites are simply what the name implies! You can shop for items listed on Japanese and USA online stores that you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to buy from without our proxy service. There are several shopping sites that you can use our service on. If you’re unfamiliar with them and don’t know what sort of items you can get from them, read on below!
Rakuten (Japan)
If you’ve never encountered Rakuten before, it’s good to know that Rakuten is Japan’s largest e-commerce website. This means hundreds of thousands of people in Japan trust and use the website everyday.
When it comes to the type of items you can find, you’ll find nearly everything you want to shop for so instead, we’ll recommend which type of items are commonly bought by our users on Rakuten, so if you’re looking to buy them too you can start here.
What to buy on Rakuten:
We recommend using Rakuten to shop for luxury items or branded items that tend to be at higher price points. Since we have weekly coupons and Rakuten sales, our users take advantage of these in combination with Japan’s weak yen to get things at much cheaper prices than anywhere else — like bags from Louis Vuitton or Hermes or alcohol items such as whiskey or wine.
Surugaya (Japan)
Surugaya is a specialty store with both online and physical stores all over Japan. They specialize in hobby items such as Gunpla or Gundam model kits, figures, and items for “otakus”, such as anime, manga, and video game merchandise. So naturally, if you’re looking for any of these items, we can almost guarantee that you’ll find it in Surugaya.
What to buy on Surugaya:
Anime figures, Gunpla models, Toy cars, Secondhand Video Game Consoles, and more.
BAPE (Japan)
If you’re already a fan of BAPE, then this brand doesn’t need any introduction to you. This streetwear brand originated in Japan, and our proxy shopping service lets you buy items directly from their Japanese stores. You can take advantage of this if you want to get any BAPE items that might have already sold out in your country or if you want to find Japan-limited BAPE releases.
What you can buy on our BAPE Proxy Shopping service:
Sneakers including BAPE Sta, BAPE collaboration items including with brands like New Era, Undercover, and BE@RBRICK, hoodies, and accessories.
FJ Select and FJ Fashion (Japan)
FJ Select and FJ Fashion are two shops unique to our website. In short, both these shops are for items that you can buy directly with our service that you might not have found in the other shops listed above.
FJ Select is for brands and online stores that we have personally collaborated with, who want to share their products to our international user base. This means that the item range is vast, and there’s almost nothing you won’t find here. FJ Fashion, as the name implies, refines that selection down a little bit to only include items from secondhand hand fashion stores or fashion brands that we closely work with and can ensure carry items that are authentic and in decent condition.
What you can buy on FJ Select and FJ Fashion:
For FJ Select, since there’s too many items to choose from, to start with, we recommend a few Japan-exclusive items such as Japanese sake and alcohol, Japanese food and ingredients, and Japan only manga and magazines. For FJ Fashion we have a good mix of Japanese brands such as Radio Eva (official Evangelion fashion line), glamb, and you can also get branded bags, streetwear, watches, and more from our trusted secondhand stores.
FROM USA (USA)
As of 2022, we’ve extended our proxy shopping services to stores from the USA as well! At the moment, if you go to our FROM USA page, you will see a list of recommended stores, and from there, you will have to browse those stores’ websites until you find an item you like.
The process is also explained under the Usage Guide portion of our FROM USA page, but you will have to copy-and-paste this item URL onto the search bar on our FROM USA page. Some items you can then proceed to order directly and simply add to your cart. We’ll discuss this process a bit more below.
What you can buy on FROM USA:
Above are a few examples of what you can buy directly from US stores. For cosmetics, you can buy directly from cosmetic brands like Fenty Beauty or from cosmetics retailers like Sephora who will have dozens of makeup brands being sold in their store.
Merchandise includes things like figures from Funko Pop or Shop Disney US exclusive items that are either only sold through their USA website or through Disneyland parks located in the US. Lastly, you can also get fashion items from renowned US brands like Under Armour or Ralph Lauren, just to name a few.
Flea Market Sites
Flea Market sites are websites where the majority of sellers on it are individual people selling stuff they have. Many items here are secondhand, however, this doesn’t mean that all the items here will look old or worn out, since many sellers who have experience with flea market sites tend to keep their items in pristine condition for other collectors.
Since the sellers here are individual people, flea market sites are great for finding rare items or vintage items — items that are no longer being sold in a typical store, so if there’s something you want that’s really hard to find, you can try your luck at a flea market site!
Mercari (Japan)
Mercari is Japan’s largest online flea market – with over 3 billion items listed and more than 20 million monthly users! With Mercari’s large number of listings and wide range of products, there’s pretty much everything you can imagine being sold here! Find things like unopened secondhand items at cheaper prices than brand new or rare collectibles not on the market anymore all on Mercari!
Since there’s so many types of items available, if you don’t know what to start, you can check out a few suggestions below based on Mercari items that are most popular amongst the users on our site.
What you can buy on Mercari:
Two of the most popular category of items on Mercari are anime merch and idol collectibles, a few examples of which are anime figures, Pokemon cards, BTS photocards, and much more. You can also find a wide range and hundreds of brands of watches, bags, and other secondhand fashion items on Mercari.
Rakuma (Japan)
Rakuma is a peer-to-peer flea market site operated by Rakuten, one of Japan’s largest e-commerce companies with a worldwide presence. On Rakuma, you can find items not just from individual users and sellers, but also from companies selling their products as part of their cooperation with Rakuten.
Rakuma also has plenty of official stores certified by Rakuten, so you can be guaranteed of their quality.
What you can buy on Rakuma:
You can try your luck at finding rare Pokemon Cards and Box Sets using Rakuma. If that’s what you’re looking for, we recommend going through trading card store Magi’s official Rakuma shop. They’re an established and well-trusted trading card store in Japan, so you can rest assured that they only carry authentic Pokemon cards. Collectible items such as Bearbrick are also popular on our Rakuma shop.
Auction Sites
Auction sites are a bit different from the two types of sites we previously mentioned. Whereas with shopping sites and flea market sites, you can buy items as is for the prices they’re listed, in auction sites, you have to bid on items first.
Using an auction site might not be as straightforward as simply shopping for something online because of the bidding process, but it’s that process that is its strong point. It’s common to score on an item for lower prices than at a store, or secure items ahead of other interested bidders so you can make sure that the item goes to you — which all-in-all makes for a great combo of great finds and great prices.
Yahoo! Auctions (Japan)
Yahoo! Auctions is an online auction website with the largest number of users in Japan, with more than 60 millions items listed everyday! If you’ve never used an online auction site before, we’ll explain some details about the important parts you need to know.
How to Use Yahoo! Auctions
When you go to our Yahoo! Auctions page and then start searching for items, you will see something that looks similar to below. The top most price written in bold is the current bid price (which means that if you want that item, you have to bid higher than that). Other than that, the other things you should take note of are:
1) Buy It Now price – In some cases, sellers will list a “Buy It Now” price. This means that they are willing to sell this item without any bidding if someone pledges that price. If you see an item you want now and it has a Buy It Now price listed, you can use this option to secure the item for yourself.
2) Current Number of Bids – This shows how many other previous bids there have been. If you see a relatively high number, expect to a higher level of competition amongst others who also want the item.
3) Time left – This shows how much time is left before the bidding closes. If you don’t put your bid in within the time period, then whoever bid the highest before it expires will get the item.
What you can buy on Yahoo! Auctions:
Luxury items are a good option on Yahoo! Auctions. When it comes to fashion, you won’t have difficulty finding a good selection of items from brands like Louis Vuitton or Supreme, and also luxury watches like Rolex, Omega, and more.
Right Now on eBay (USA)
Right Now on eBay, or also known for short as eBay, is the largest online auction site in the US. Although you might find a lot more items made in the US or from US brands sold here, since it’s a pretty international website, you can expect to find items from all over the world being sold there too.
Right Now on eBay Special Features
One thing to keep in mind about eBay is that although it is primarily an auction site, meaning you place a bid or the price you’re willing to pay for the item and others can outbid you if they place a higher price (or you can also outbid someone if you do the same), they have a unique feature called the Buy It Now system.
If you see this option available (highlighted with a red box in the image below), it means you can buy the item immediately without having to bid for it by paying for the listed Buy It Now price. (In some cases, the Buy it Now Price can be higher than the listed auction price, as you can see from the first item, the Designer Luxury Handbag, in the image below. In this case, you can take your chance and place a bid for 150.00 USD, but there is a chance that someone can outbid you and you can lose out on the chance to buy the item.)
Make a Best Offer is another feature of eBay. This means you can make an offer to buy the item for a lower price than the price displayed, but this price must not be lower than 80% of the original item price (so in the example of the 145.00 USD Luxury Fashion Purse below, you can offer to buy it for as low as 116.00 USD but it will be up to the seller if they are willing to sell it for that price or refuse your offer).
What you can buy on Right Now on eBay:
Our recommended eBay items are US-brand items such as car and motorcycle parts and accessories (you can try your luck at getting hard-to-find parts for motorcycles like Harley-Davidson for example), and collectibles and hobby items from franchises such as Transformers, Marvel and DC, or baseball cards for American baseball teams.
How to use One Map’s very handy search function
Searching for items on One Map using the search bar
Now that you know what sort of items we offer and which shops you can best find them from, it’s time to start searching for the items you want!
The One Map search bar is your holy grail when it comes to finding any and all items. We’ve been constantly improving it over the years to improve its features and make it much more easy to use for our customers. There are several ways for you to use the search bar:
1. Brand or item name search
Just like any other search bar on the internet, you can find things by simply typing in or copy-and-pasting the brand name or item name of an item you want. The search bar is featured across all our shop pages on the FROM JAPAN site and the Right Now on eBay site. You can even filter items using the drop down button on the left hand side where it says “All Categories“. Clicking on this will show different item categories which you can apply if you only want to find a certain category of item.
*Right Now on eBay only: If you click on the Categories drop down menu on our search bar while viewing the Right Now on eBay page, items that fall under that category will appear without needing to put in any brand or item names into the search bar.
– If you want to search only items from Mercari site or our Yahoo! Auctions site for example, you only need to click on the Mercari tab or Yahoo! Japan Auctions tab and you can use the search bar there and only items from that store will appear.
2. Item URL Search
*NEW (from March 16, 2023): We have improved our Item URL search feature so that you can immediately get a price quote and add items to your cart if you copy and paste an item URL into the search bar. You can find more details about this new feature in our guide blog post here. This new feature applies to both Japan and USA stores.
3. Item Banner Search
For each page you go to, whether it’s our “Japan All” page or specific store pages, we have our recommended items section of the website. You will see them neatly lined up with an accompanying image called an “item banner” to make things easier to see.
If you click on any of these item banners, you will get taken to the search results for those items. It’s super handy if there’s something you’re looking for that appears on this section!
How to find items on Japanese sites without knowing Japanese
So you know what type of items you can find now, but the question remains: how do I search for items on Japanese stores without Japanese? Since item listings on our websites under our FROM JAPAN service are taken from Japanese websites and therefore will appear in Japanese, we’ll share a few tips below to help you find items without needing to read or write in Japanese.
How to search for brand names in Japanese
When it comes to fashion brands, you typically do not need to input brand names in Japanese even for Japanese brands.
However, in some cases, if you want to get more results (like in the image below, we searched for “Louis Vuitton” in English and got 390,206 items versus searching for “Louis Vuitton” as ルイヴィトン in Japanese and got 425,527 items), you can use Google to search for how a brand name is written in Japanese.
Search results for Louis Vuitton in English:
Search results for Louis Vuitton in Japanese:
Simply type the brand name into Google’s search bar, then copy and paste the word 日本語 (which means Japanese) and you can get a page with automatic Google translations like below. This only typically works for brands that are famous enough to be recognized by Google Translate.
How to search for character names in Japanese stores
Let’s say you want to find merch for Anya Forger from Spy x Family. Luckily enough, the title for Spy x Family is in English so you can just type that into our search bar and you’ll get results like the screenshot below.
But this isn’t exactly what you want since it’s giving you all sorts of items and you don’t want to have to look through all 931 items that appeared just to find Anya Forger merchandise. What you can do in cases like these is use Wikipedia. When it comes to anime or manga or video game series, or any sort of Japanese media, the English Wikipedia page for them will also list titles and names in Japanese.
You can see this in the Englush Wikipedia page for “List of Spy x Family characters”. Once you scroll down a bit, you can find the section for Anya, and we’ve highlighted in a red box how her name is written in Japanese in the screenshot below (アーニャ・フォージャー).
You can then simply copy and paste that name into our search bar, and now you can see how only Anya Forger merchandise appears!
You can also apply this method not just to characters, but also to series names or anything that is from Japan and has a Wikipedia page. For example, if you open up the Wikipedia page for Demon Slayer, you can see that it’s simply called Kimetsu no Yaiba in Japanese, and they also have the name written in Japanese (鬼滅の刃) handy, which again, you can simply copy and paste into our search bar.
Still can’t find what you want? We have a “Find it for me” service!
If there’s a specific item you want that you still can’t find after you’ve tried the tips above, we also have a Find It for Me service you can use. You can find more details about the service here, but essentially, you can make requests to our Customer Service team for any items you can’t find, and once your request is processed, the items you’re looking for will be added to our website within 1-2 business days, and you can add this item to your cart like normal.
For any other details or questions
We also have a Q&A page that you can find here! But if your questions weren’t answered there, we also have a Contact Form you can reach our Customer Service with, or you can also send them an email directly via info@fromjapan.co.jp to reach them.
And with that, you should be all ready to place your first order or bid with our proxy service!
