Welcome to Idol Hell!

Table of Contents

• Disclaimer
• Purchasing Goods from Online Retailers
  • AmiAmi
  • Amazon.jp
    • Browsing Amazon.jp
  • Other Retailers (CDJapan, HobbySearch, Tokyo Otaku Mode, etc.)
  • Official Japanese Retailers (Animate, Gamers, Sofmap, etc.)
• Purchasing Second-hand Goods
  • Mandarake
  • Rakuten
  • Yahoo Auctions Japan (YAJ)
    • Browsing YAJ
• Using a Third-Party Service
  • Tenso
  • Buyee, FromJapan, ZenMarket…
• Shipping
• Merchandise Vocabulary
  • Character Names
  • Goods
    • Keychains, charms, badges, etc.
    • Stationery, posters, books etc.
    • Clothing, bags, etc.
    • Figurines, stuffed toys
• Nesoberi
  • Sizes
  • Washing
• Purchasing Goods in Japan
  • Akihabara
  • Ikebukuro
  • Nakano
• URLs
• Closing Remarks and Credits

 

Disclaimer

This guide was made to help you understand how to get otherwise difficult items outside of Japan.  Please note that we are not responsible for any damage, loss, or fraud of your goods.  We were also not endorsed or sponsored by any of the companies mentioned in the guide.  They are just popular among overseas fans.
If something is not covered in the guide or you have any questions, please hop on the /r/LoveLive Discord server (discord.gg/lovelive), and join the #merchandise channel, there are plenty of people with their own experience that can help you.
Finally, please spend within your limits!  Remember that you need to eat too—I’m pretty sure nesoberis are not very delicious.
Happy purchasing!  And thank you for supporting the LoveLive! Series.

*I am definitely not responsible for anything that happens



Purchasing Goods from Online Retailers

You’ve taken your first step into the merchandise world, welcome!  But where should you go?  There are plenty of retailers that sell online, but only a handful that actually ships worldwide with a functional English website and decent prices.
Here are some of the known websites:

AmiAmi

AmiAmi is probably the most popular retailer among overseas Love Live fans, known for its wide variety of products, relatively cheap prices, and sometimes a good discount when they’re trying to get rid of stock.  They sell a variety of goods like T-shirts, messenger bags, figurines, nendoroids, and various keychains.
One of the downfalls to AmiAmi is that once something is sold out, it is sold out.  You can make a notice that will e-mail you if the item comes back in stock (this happens if the maker decides to reprint the product). AmiAmi also does not ask for payment until your item is ready to be shipped.
Another is that once you order or pre-order something, you cannot cancel the order.  You can e-mail AmiAmi and ask to cancel it and generally they’re very relaxed and do so (they kind of give you a mild reprimand and tell you to not do it next time), but if it happens too much, they will freeze and blacklist your account.  This prevents you from purchasing anymore goods from them.  It is also against their terms of service to make a new account if your old one is blacklisted.

Amazon.jp

You’re probably familiar with, (or at least heard of) Amazon—this is just the Japanese branch.  You can purchase merchandise on Amazon and have it sent to you.  While their variety is not as much as other stores, it is still a solid choice.  Amazon might be of interest if you’re considering books, magazines, CDs, and BDs.  Amazon generally gets their own special bonus (特典 tokuten) for certain items as well (see below).  Another benefit to Amazon is that you can easily cancel your order before it ships without any penalty.  
Please note a couple of things: not everything can be shipped worldwide on Amazon.jp—in fact, most things that are not sold by Amazon.jp directly are not available to be shipped worldwide. Also, when purchasing from Amazon, they do use the DHL shipping option. DHL from Amazon is a lot cheaper compared to DHL with some other companies–please keep this in mind when using DHL outside of Amazon.

 
Aqours First LoveLive! ~Step! ZERO to ONE~ Blu-ray Memorial Box came with a tote-bag and an A4 Visual Sheet of the key visual from the first live.  This was only available for customers purchasing from Amazon. 

 

Browsing Amazon.jp

Amazon Japan may be daunting to use at first because, well, it is in Japanese.  You can quickly switch the interface to English via this option.

And voila, now you can browse a bit more easier on Amazon JP!

Another option that will ease your browsing experience is the ”International Shipping Eligible” filter.  This will give you all the items that are available for international shipping. You can find it at the very bottom of the filters after searching for an item.

Other Retailers (CDJapan, HobbySearch, Tokyo Otaku Mode, etc.)

The sites that are very similar to AmiAmi (selling hobby and character goods).  They may not offer the products at a cheaper price or of the same variety, but if there is something you cannot find on AmiAmi or other sites, these might be good places to browse.  
In particular, CDJapan does give a small payment to sites that may use an affiliate link from them.  You might see some of your favourite fan sites use these links if you happen to be looking for a place to buy these products.  You can support your favourite fan sites (for example, the LLWikia) through these links.

Official Japanese Retailers (Animate, Gamers, Sofmap, etc.)

These are sites that offer their online services to those in Japan.  Their variety is very similar to AmiAmi, with some sites (like Gamers) getting exclusive merchandise.  Some people may use these sites to get a specific bonus (tokuten) that is exclusive to that retailer.
Ordering from these websites require you to either live in Japan, know someone who is willing to receive your goods, or use a warehouse service like Tenso.  You can look more into the Tenso service here.
(Bushiroad has their own official English website for their fans if you’re considering buying Bushiroad exclusive merchandise)



Purchasing Second-hand Goods

Some goods are available through second-hand stores—these are basically goods that a person or a company has purchased before and are reselling it onto the marketplace.  You can find a lot of limited edition items here (for example: keychains and charms that were sold only at the Neopasa collaboration shop, various prizes from arcades).  Here is a few sites that are used for second-hand goods shopping.

Mandarake

Mandarake is a very popular second-hand goods shop in Japan.  Typically, people bring in their goods to a Mandarake shop to sell.  The shop then will give a quote of how much the item is worth to them.  If the seller agrees to their price, Mandarake will buy the goods from them to resell at a later time.
On Mandarake you may look for keychains, rubber straps, etc. but the things that people tend to look for on Mandarake are crane game prize figurines and nesoberis.

Rakuten

Rakuten is similar to Amazon–sometimes called the “Japanese Amazon”.  It’s basically an online platform where companies and individuals can sell their products to customers.  You can find a lot of older goods or goods that were part of blind boxes here.
Rakuten Global may not be as well stocked with merchandise as its Japanese counterpart, so it is recommended to browse the Japanese marketplace and use a proxy to obtain the products from there.

Yahoo Auctions Japan (YAJ)

Yahoo Auctions Japan (YAJ) is basically the “Japanese” version of eBay.  It is an online platform where people can put their goods up for auction.  Others will then proceed to bid for the items.  If you win, you pay the seller the final price you placed.
A lot of people in the fandom use YAJ to buy various goods.  Sometimes you can get a good deal here.

Browsing YAJ

When using YAJ, you generally need a third party service to bid and receive the items for you.  Services like Buyee can help you with that.  In addition, you can explore YAJ using Buyee (which uses a machine translation for the auction information).
If you happen to not be using Buyee or any other third party service to navigate, here’s a quick rundown of what you can do to casually search for merch.

Where my cursor is currently in is the search bar.  Everything around the bar are filters for you to search through certain items.  
フリマ: Flea Market (people just straight up selling their goods for a set price)　
オークション: Auction (where items are up for bids)　
すべて: Both
The grey drop down box is a categories section.  There are different categories like Computers, Beauty, etc.  But since we’re looking at Love Live specific merch, let’s assume that your search terms will be specific enough.
Let’s see, what should we search for… How about everyone’s favorite, nesoberis?

Tons of options as you can see.  Let’s look at that new Muse 3rd Year set.


This is where you can see the up-to-date information on the auction, including pictures of the product.  These nesoberis are a very old, Happy Maker keychain mascot set which was only released in the arcades as prizes.  Let’s look at the details listed on the page.
入札件数 : Is the number of bids
残り時間: remaining time left until the bid is over
The 800 Yen indicates the current bidding price of the product.
The rest below the purchase / bid button (so that orange one) is as follows:
Sellers information (name, reputation (the Sun is good, the Umbrella is bad), an alert for when the auction is updated (someone bids, the seller changes something, etc), and an option to send the Seller a message.  The section below is an optional one—this seller actually has a store that you can check out.


Let’s check the beige box, there’s a lot of important information in here.
状態：Condition (New 新品, Used 中古, etc.  They’ll generally talk about this again in the description)
個数: Quantity available—this may not be counting how many items are in one auction (because it could be a set), but how much they’re selling all together (how many sets does this auction come with)
開始日時 / 終了日時 : Start and end date and time
自動延長 : I believe this is an automatic extension option if someone bids in the last five minutes of the auction.  If you were to bid just before this auction ends, then the ending time will go up by five more minutes.
あり / なし: Basically means Have / Don’t have in these cases
早期終了 : Early close (the seller can close the bid before the end date following certain conditions)
返品: Return Policy (返品不可 will indicate no return)
入札者評価制限 : Bidder rating restriction (have to be a certain rating to bid)
入札者認証制限 : Bidder authentication restriction (your account must be authenticated with Yahoo Japan)
最高額入札者: Highest bidder (their name I’m assuming, which you can only see if you’re logged in)
開始価格: Starting bid price
オークションID: Auction ID (might be needed when using 3rd party sites)
You can scroll past this part to see any information that the seller has posted about the product.  This will generally be a product description, where it came from, the price of shipping, etc.
Hopefully that explains mostly everything about a YAJ page (if you’re looking without using automatic translation from a different site).  What happens when I want to bid?  If only there were some options…



Using a Third-Party Service  

Inevitably, the “only-available-in-Japan” restricts overseas fans from buying goods that they really want.  That’s where these services come in; you can use them to purchase goods that you otherwise could not do on your own.

Tenso

Tenso is a warehouse service that receives goods from retailers that their customers have purchased and holds it for them for an amount of time.  Since they are in Japan, you get rid of that requirement from Japan-only retailers of needing a Japanese address (although, it has been known that sometimes Tenso will not work).  Once they have received your item(s), you can get Tenso to forward it to you.
If you’re using Tenso for the first time, you are required to send them 2 (or 3) pieces of identification due to Japanese law needing official information for forwarding services.

Buyee, DEJAPAN, FromJapan, ZenMarket…

The sites, listed above, are very similar to what Tenso is but function a bit differently.  They allow you to buy merchandise from sites such as YAJ, Rakuten, etc.  without having to create your own account with a Tenso address and such (this is commonly called a proxy).  
Most of these sites have a built-in automatic translation system for sites such as YAJ, making it easier for people who might run into trouble when searching Japanese webpages. This can be useful for those who can’t read Japanese.
Each site may be different in terms of cost (how much they charge for you to use their service), so I highly recommend looking around or asking first to see which one you should go with.  Also, spend some time looking through their websites to check their functionality and if it’s easy to use.
On a side note, DEJAPAN is one of the official LL! SS!! retailer for overseas fans (with the exception of certain regions that have their own store), so if you are searching for the Memorial items or tour goods, they might be someone to look into.



Shipping

When you finally decide on some merchandise, there are various shipping methods that may be available to you.

 
If you want to know an estimate of the costs to send your items, I believe forwarding and proxy services can provide you a quote for your items with the different options.  
Alternatively, Japan Post has a calculator that you can use to estimate shipping costs.  DHL also has their own calculator.
Some things to keep in mind when you’re thinking about your shipping costs are based on a volumetric formula – the weight of your package and the size of the item you are ordering.  Think about nesoberis–they’re fairly large plushes, which take up a bigger box.  While it might not necessarily be heavy, the box size will be bigger and could be much more expensive.  The last thing to keep in mind is how much your seller will pad the box to protect it during shipping. Most companies are quite good at packing items with sufficient protection, but a 3rd party seller may or may not have enough protection. 

Merchandise Vocabulary

Words that you may want to know when you’re browsing and wondering what the heck a 寝そべりぬいぐるみ 国木田花丸 サンタガール編(覚醒) LL is.

Character Names

If you’re unfamiliar with the Kanji names of the characters, here’s a chart for reference.

Goods

This covers the different types of merchandise sorted out into different sections.  Not everything may be covered here, so please feel free to ask if you’re unsure.

Keychains, charms, badges, etc.

Stationery, posters, books etc.

Clothing, bags, etc.

Figurines, stuffed toys

Nesoberi

Nesoberis, or sometimes called ‘nesos’ are stuffed toys that are lying down (hence the name ‘nesoberi’ which is roughly translated ‘to sprawl’ or ‘to lie sprawled’).  These have become one of the most popular items to collect because of their softness and how huggable they are.  They have also become so popular that they are getting their own mobile phone game…
In #merchandise, nesoberi is a very common topic among everyone who frequents the channel.  This section is to quickly go over some frequently asked questions.  This may also decide if you want to start collecting nesoberis even though you probably already have one.
If you want to look at upcoming nesoberis that will be released, please take a look at this doc.

Sizes

Nesoberis come in various sizes, here is a chart for reference.  You can also check out the nesoberi tag for a visual of the nesoberi sizes.