From Nijigaoka With Love
Alright I'm going to be in Japan until mid July. I'm also going to have a lot more time on my hands. So while I'm not hooking into my manga and preparing for the JLPT, I'll be shopping for unusual and exciting products from Japan.
You can join in the fun also. Let me be your personal shopper for a month. If there is anything you thought you would like from Japan but never knew how to get then now is the time to ask. I've started up a Flutterscape account under the name nijigaoka (that's Japanese for @rainbowhill)
What is Flutterscape?
Flutterscape is a social shopping service that helps people outside of Japan get what they want from their own personal shopper. Plenty of you have wanted to know how to get authentic manga and other products from Japan, now is your chance to ask me to find it for you.
Here is how it works.
- Sign up for a Flutterscape account: You can use your Facebook login if you like. If you are anywhere other than Japan then you will be given a buyers account.
- Browse for goods: You can browse through the gallery of over 3000 items that people have posted for sale in nearly 20 categories. You can also find the newest, top favorited, most discussed or best seller items.
- Post a request: If you can't find what you are looking for make a request. You might have a request that know one else has thought of. There might be something special for an obscure hobby or interest you have.
- Make your purchase: At the bottom of each item on offer you'll find the big red "Oh, I want one!" button. The price is right next to the button in your currency, you can also view shipping fees before you add the items to your cart.
How does it get from Japan to your place?
When the transaction has been confirmed on Flutterscape, I pack the item for you and run down to the Post Office. The folks at Japan Post ship it to Flutterscape's logistics partner who then forward the package on to you.
Flutterscape aim to make shopping safe and fun, they take care of all the shipping and transaction processing so you don't need to worry about a thing.
"Unlike traditional marketplaces, FlutterScape brings sellers and buyers together in a fun, casual and collaborative way that allow sellers to share a real narrative of their product discoveries and buyers to expose to an adventure and obtain unique products from abroad."I had a brief exchange with Takehiro Kakiyama (on Twitter @hirrro), Co-founder and CEO of Flutterscape just the other day and this is what he had to say;
"we want to focus on more social side which is to share your product discovery"For me this works both ways, I get a chance to share the things I discover in Japan. You get the opportunity to shop for things that would normally be out of your reach.
P.P.S. If all you need to know about a product can be summed up in 140 characters you can follow me on Twitter.
P.P.S. I've also set up a Tumblr From Nijigaoka With Love to give you a bit more background on each product, mixed up with other random stuff.
Thanks for following, I really mean that!
