tiki spends your money yay!

OK, so we all enjoyed looking at Yahoo Japan Auctions?

What about the Japanese Disney store?

Here's the current top link:

http://www.disneystore.co.jp/shop/top.aspx

Whoa! OK, I'll wait a bit for you to quit imitating Keanu Reeves.

If you just wanna zero in on our fuzzy blue alien friend, they have some categories devoted to popular characters, like the inevitable Disney Princesses, and NBC. Here's the current shortcut:

Stitch stuffs

Now, I say "current," because like anything, they redesign and reshuffle this stuff all the time.

Here's some stuff I think is true about the Japan Disney Store online: it represents a selection of what's available in the bricks and mortar Disney Stores in Japan. This is mostly different from what you can find at Tokyo Disney Resort, and a lot of it (though not all) is exclusive to the Disney Stores there, meaning you can't find it at other toy retailers.

One drawback: they only seem to reserve a sample of any particular good to sell online, so stuff often gets sold out quickly (even when you can still find it at the stores). The other negative, if you don't happen to live in Japan: they don't ship overseas. Meaning, in order to buy something here, you either have to go through a buying agent (remember, like we discussed for Yahoo Japan buying?) or you have to have a very, very, VERY patient friend in Japan who doesn't mind storing a lot of Stitch crap in his or her tiny Tokyo apartment.

Some good news! They seem to refresh stuff very often, like at least once a week. And, they'll often put stuff on sale, including some stuff that had disappeared from the site. Another plus, even if they have sold out on the piece you want (which happens when you have the added delay of telling a third party to purchase something for you) descriptions tend to be much, much better and more complete than on Yahoo Auctions, so you'll at least be able to tell the dimensions and weight of an item (and thus can make a guess as to shipping costs). (I really don't know what the deal is with Yahoo Auctions, because sometimes I almost suspect they charge sellers by the word in their descriptions: even if you run it through a translation program, all you're gonna get is "It is lovely. Please no returns," and estimated shipping costs to Yokohama.)

I wanted to show some links for Yahoo Japan Shopping as well, but I think this has gotten long enough for now.