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: