Guillotine

From dannychoo: “AmiAmi has recently launched the English version of their website.”

Now you can buy your anime figures and related merchandise straight from Japan… http://www.amiami.com/shop?set=english

Taking a quick look at the site they carry all the major brands of anime figures and dolls you would expect along with games, music CDs, DVD/BR, and all the anime costume and related merchandise you can imagine

There are some good reasons to read the FAQ of the site before ordering though. First of all the prices are all in Japanese Yen (currently 99 JPY = $1 USD) and due to this they only accept Paypal since it will automatically convert the funds from dollars to yen. Also while you may notice the prices seem quite a bit lower than US based stores keep in mind that the shipping is going to easily make up the difference.

According to their FAQ shipping to the US is approximatey from 1500 JPY to 5200 JPY (about $15 – $52 USD) for single item purchases depending on size, so that 1/8 Alter Mio figure going for 5450 JPY (about $54 USD) is going to have a $20-$36 shipping charge with it bringing the total cost to around the same as US based stores are selling it for. Of course it should go without saying that returns would be a pain, so I’d suggest not buying something unless you really intend to keep it… As a matter of fact the only thing even mentioned about returns was in the case of damages, and it stated that the item must be returned within 7 days.

The only other thing that stuck out in the FAQ was that they do carry some items that are restricted to Japan only, and if you for some reason add one of these items to your cart it will cause the whole order to be cancelled, so keeping that in mind would be a good thing.