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Apr. 14th, 2025 01:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsyN-scale Shinkansen acquired! The base 8-car powered set, from Japan to my house, was $130. Not bad. Anyone selling it online for less isn't including shipping or transfer services, which ends up being more than Surugaya's "foreigner tax". Maybe I'll get the add-on set later when there's another sale. The only real and effective way to get them for less would require being in Japan though. I could ask some of my friends who go often? Nah, I have respect for how precious luggage space can be. Something about diminishing returns applies here.
There's another curious bit about Surugaya; when I first started ordering from them in 2019, my order number, presumably sequentially generated, was in the thousands, as that was right after they announced that they started international sales. From 2020 to 2022, there was a lull in activity, and when I started buying from them again, the apparent order count hadn't yet broken past 20k. Then suddenly business exploded and sometime this year, their order count went above a million and they just announced they just built another giant warehouse, in addition to having already taken over a whole ass department store building to use as their new flagship store. For anime and video game stuff.
With how willing they are to sell anime merchandise to foreigners, you'd think that they're up to their necks in the stuff and after having visited their stores in Akihabara, I say that would be a correct assumption. Anyone selling anime stuff in Akihabara wasn't picky about who was buying it or why, just as long as they had money for it, language barriers be damned. As soon as something gets taken off the shelf or out of the display case to eventually end up in someone's home in a distant land, another item emerges from the back to take its place. After all, why simply toss it when someone on the other side of the world is willing to pay money for it? It's a win-win for everyone involved.
In discussing trips to Japan, I told my coworker about Surugaya, so that he would have an online source for a lot of stuff and not need to buy it while in Japan, freeing up space for more specialized and esoteric things. I haven't asked him if he bought anything there yet, but judging by his reaction to the site, I wouldn't be surprised if he has.
There's another curious bit about Surugaya; when I first started ordering from them in 2019, my order number, presumably sequentially generated, was in the thousands, as that was right after they announced that they started international sales. From 2020 to 2022, there was a lull in activity, and when I started buying from them again, the apparent order count hadn't yet broken past 20k. Then suddenly business exploded and sometime this year, their order count went above a million and they just announced they just built another giant warehouse, in addition to having already taken over a whole ass department store building to use as their new flagship store. For anime and video game stuff.
With how willing they are to sell anime merchandise to foreigners, you'd think that they're up to their necks in the stuff and after having visited their stores in Akihabara, I say that would be a correct assumption. Anyone selling anime stuff in Akihabara wasn't picky about who was buying it or why, just as long as they had money for it, language barriers be damned. As soon as something gets taken off the shelf or out of the display case to eventually end up in someone's home in a distant land, another item emerges from the back to take its place. After all, why simply toss it when someone on the other side of the world is willing to pay money for it? It's a win-win for everyone involved.
In discussing trips to Japan, I told my coworker about Surugaya, so that he would have an online source for a lot of stuff and not need to buy it while in Japan, freeing up space for more specialized and esoteric things. I haven't asked him if he bought anything there yet, but judging by his reaction to the site, I wouldn't be surprised if he has.
