Thanksfor your help Marco, sound like the perfect pastime for the Easter holidays!! Peter
>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.
