Shop of the Year 2010 award for International Shipping at Rakuten Ichiba Japan has been announced!

In the beginning of each year Rakuten Ichiba Japan chooses the so-called “Shop of the Year” in 47 different categories. From 2010 we added new award category – “Shop of the Year of International Shipping”.

And we are very happy to announce the first laureate of the new award:

The award goes to …(drumroll…)… “HONEY-BUNNY”!

The original Japanese version of their Top page is here: 

http://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/honey-bunny/

HONEY-BUNNY offers natural-taste, casual street ladies’ fashion apparel and accessories from such brands as franche lippe, NIMES, rough natural charm, CALINER and River Side Café.

Since 2009, the shop has been working exceptionally hard to provide excellent products with unmatched service to the customers outside of Japan, which enabled them to become one of the top international shipping shops of Rakuten Ichiba Japan. This is certainly a well-deserved award.

However, HONEY-BUNNY is not satisfied with their current achievement. Now they are pushing their boundaries further, by starting yesterday to offer 50% DISCOUNT for autumn and winter clothes:

http://item.rakuten.co.jp/honey-bunny/c/0000000140/?scid=fb_os_999

Please note that the following items are excluded from the 50% DISCOUNT sale:

* New models.

* Spring items

* Regular assortment.

And apparently, they have been flooded with orders from many countries in Asia, so check out their half-priced bargain products before they run out of stock. Especially if you enjoy shopping for easy-to-wear, casually cute clothes!

The last chance to get super bargain "lucky bags"! + a guest article from New Zealand about "lucky dip bags"!

The New Year celebrations are over in most parts of the world, but not yet for a few Rakuten Ichiba merchants, who are still offering extra discounted "fukubukuro" or "lucky bags", which can be purchased from here:
http://bit.ly/ichibahotdeals

The "lucky bag" offers will expire roughly in a couple of days, depending on a merchant, so it is your last chance to get New Year bargain products from Rakuten Ichiba Japan!

If you are not sure what "lucky bags" are about, please read this blog article, kindly provided by Waylon Kenning from New Zealand:

If you’ve ever been to Japan around New Years you’ll see what appears to be a whole bunch of Lucky Dip Bags. The difference between the New Zealand and Japanese versions is mainly to do with price and quality – in New Zealand Lucky Dip bags contain crappy gifts and cost about $5. In Japan, Lucky Bags, or Fukubukuro (福袋, lucky bag, mystery bag) are serious business, with the most expensive bags costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So what do you get? Well, it’s a mystery of course! And yet, it’s not really. I went to an electronics store in Hiroshima once and saw Digital SLR camera Lucky Bags. The bags specified the minimum specifications of the camera, but you didn’t get to choose the brand or model. Rest assured you were more than likely going to get something great and at a heavy discount.
I ended up paying 10,000 yen (roughly $160 NZD) for a Lucky Dip of Japanese clothing worth $600 NZD. Awesome bargains, I ended up getting a puffy jacket, puffy vest, hoodie, beanie, long sleeve shirt and t-shirt. Not a bad haul, though bear in mind that fashion taste in New Zealand is often different from Japanese fashion – while puffy shiny jackets are in vogue in Japan, they certainly are not in New Zealand.
Interested in seeing some examples of lucky dip bags? Check out a collection of lucky bags at Rakuten, Japan’s largest online shopping mall: http://bit.ly/ichibahotdeals

Oh, and don't forget to enter our "10-times the Superpoints" campaign before 19th of January, so that you will get 10-times the usual points for shopping at Rakuten Ichiba Japan. For more info, please click here: http://bit.ly/eCZYe4

Special gloves for smartphones - offered worldwide by Rakuten Ichiba Japan shops

It's cold without gloves, but you still want to use your favourite smartphone? Now there are special gloves that let you use touch smartphones without taking them off! It's been becoming a hit here in Japan, amid almost record cold winter.

There are several colours offered and visually they are no different from usual gloves. The secret is in the fabric of the gloves, which allows comfortable operation of a touch-panel smartphone.

http://en.item.rakuten.com/murauchi-denki/4571399360137/

And here is a bilingual description of the gloves:

Lucky draw promotion campaign by golf gear shop Greenfil, in Rakuten Ichiba Japan

Love golf? Then perhaps you know the following brands:

Yonex

Dunlop

Bridgestone

Mizuno

Callaway

Nike


Titleist

Taylormade

There are several shops in Rakuten Ichiba Japan which specialize in golf gear and this time we want to highlight Greenfil, as they have started a lucky draw campaign today!

The campaign entry page:
http://event.rakuten.co.jp/borderless/campaign/20101207/en/?scid=fb_os_999

Another reason to highlight this shop is that Greenfil offers one of the widest choices of golf products for women and thus garnered wide popularity among female golfers in Japan. Now Greenfil is offering their products to everywhere around the world through our site!

We are presenting 1000 Rakuten Superpoints for more than 5000 yen worth purchase!

The idea is simple. You enter the campaign, shop for at least 5000 yen and then receive 1000 Rakuten Superpoints in the period specified in the campaign rules.

If you love reading rules, scroll down in this page and enjoy:
http://event.rakuten.co.jp/borderless/campaign/20101202/en/?scid=fb_os_999

Well, actually I do recommend you to read the rules at least once, because we conduct the same format of a point campaign time to time, without major changes in the rules.

So, what are we promising to give you? 1000 Rakuten Superpoints!
Rakuten Superpoints are like mileage points, which you earn from each of your purchases in our site. Our rate is one of the highest - you get 1 Rakuten Superpoint for every 100 Yen spent.
Definitely much more generous than airmiles!

Once you have Rakuten Superpoints, you can spend them in ANY shop in Rakuten Ichiba Japan, and there are over 30 thousand of them, offering millions of products! Far better than very limited airmile exchange catalogs, with just over 100 items. ;-)

Join us in Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe to this blog, and you will keep getting info about how to have fun shopping on Rakuten and make great savings in the same time!

The video guide to Rakuten Ichiba Japan, International Shipping!

Here is a short video, which we branded "1-minute video". Yes, it is just one minute, so please have a quick look!




Quick facts about Rakuten Ichiba Japan, International Sales:

1. Rakuten Ichiba Japan is the biggest shopping site in Japan, with over 50 million registered members.

2. Many  of Rakuten Ichiba Japan's shops ship outside of Japan.

3. Registration is free and it allows saving Rakuten Superpoints, which can be spent in future purchases.

Earn 10-times the Rakuten Superpoints for shopping from "We Welcome Foreign Buyers" shops!

http://bit.ly/hJm1AC

In spring of 2010 we started the so called "WELCOME shop" program. This name comes from the declaration that shops make: "We Welcome Foreign Buyers", meaning that they promise to provide corteous service for orders and inquiries received from outside of Japan.

So, these shops are very eager to serve shoppers outside of Japan - very international-minded and forward-thinking.

It is especially exciting to watch some of the shops working hard on learning polite and easy-to-understand natural English. Some of them go a step further and learn other languages too.

Very soon we will have a global marketplace, where shoppers around the world will be able to buy anything from anywhere. Safely and smoothly. This is the ideal that drives us.