On Mar 15, 2005, at 11:07 PM, Peter Smekal wrote:
Hhhmmm ... how did you get registered? ... just curious
Persistence. For those interested in actually registering and bidding, the following may be of help.
-Marco ===================================
- You do not have to live in Japan to register as a user. Some persistent trial and error with a web translator will do the trick.
- Although most auctions specify "Seller will not ship internationally," in fact, many will if you ask them politely in Japanese (close to 80% of the sellers I ask say yes).
- "Yikes!" you may be thinking, "How do I ask in Japanese?" Well, with the help of a Japanese-speaking friend, I created a communication construction kit that will handle virtually all of the communications necessary to bid, win and negotiate the payment and delivery of an item. You can find it here:
http://www.alpert.com/yahoo_auction_kit.html
You'll need to have your browser set up to display Japanese characters to
see it properly.
- Pretty much everyone who says yes will accept an International Postal Money Order for payment.
A note on translating the registration pages: Page-based translators won't work on pages that require log-in or are generated by scripts. (this includes the later pages you will encounter in the auction registration process). For those sorts of pages you have to manually paste the hunks of text into a text translator. The one I use is here:
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/text/
Paste the Japanese characters into the left hand box, click the bottom of the two sets of characters with an arrow in the middle box (that selects Japanese to English translation), and click the button with the orange border. The translated text will appear in the right hand box.
Also, don't try inputting your data into a page displayed in a page translator. Keep two browser windows open: one the original Japanese page and the other the translated page. Read from the translated page, but enter your data into the original page.
There's a fair amount of trail and error involved (especially when you get to the pages where you input an address and other assorted stuff), but persistence will pay off.
One thing to keep in mind is that you have to have a credit card # on file with them in order to bid. They charge the card about $2.90 a month for months in which you make bids. This was supposed to increase security for auction participants, but personally I think it was a response to Yahoo!'s then-sagging revenues.
