What are Yahoo Auctions
(This is important)

Important as of 06.05.2022. Yahoo Japan have limited the access to European Union and UK. If you wish to watch it please use VPN. If you don’t wish to pay VPN use their free trial or install a browser extension to something like Hola VPN (Chrome) that will give you limited time access so you can begin your VPNing. 

Now you can continue reading essentials
Of the Yahoo Surfing.
– Leo

I will cut the crap and will explain in short. Most of Japanese don’t know English and Yahoo Japan is meant for Japanese not “Outsiders” of the western world, so there are multiple Websites with bot translators that will help you navigating through it.
You can use Yahoo Auctions by translating the Original website using in-browser translation app.

There are all the categories you would expect a normal website like Ebay or Amazon to have, however if you are new and going to try to Find Genuine R18 Work Meister ET15 you are going to get into a lots of misunderstanding cause you will find 0 results. “How can it be, I thought Japan is full of that stuff?!” You are right, but your searching was wrong. You were lost in translation and it’s something very common in Japan.

How it Really Works

Yahoo is in Japanese and even very good translators sometimes won’t make you understand what this Japanese guy meant. Japanese is different, it’s completely different. So doing an Ebay style search is pointless. “But I know dudes that brought parts from Japan, and there is even a complete industry around it!”. That is correct and working with Japanese auctions is fairly easy if you follow these steps:

Steps You have to Follow to Find Stuff

1. Never search for something exact. Searching for a specific set of wheels and specs will lead to a very few results or none at all. Instead choose radius and amount of holes, it is offered in Website categories. Now set the price range you want to spend (Use our Calculator to understand all the fees after purchase) and begin scrolling.

   Yes Yahoo is all about scrolling
   you find a listing of item you like
   you realize it’s not what you need
   and you scroll again until you find

2. Look where no one does: Looking for car parts is always important not to look where everyone is looking. (Little secret of mine). You don’t want to go into Body Kit section to find body kits, there are very few of them and prices are over the roof. Instead you go to Body parts and you scroll until you find something you want or something you never knew you wanted or even existed.

3. How to use Search window: “There is a search window, what is it meant for then?” Well it works with Japanese in most ways but you can also sort such things like you are looking for wheels but there are variety of 5 lug patterns and categories are offering just 5, you search for 114.3 or 100 to find more specific options. Or there are 10+ Generations of Toyota Crown so you are just typing JZS131 or 7 gen Honda Accord CL7 or CL9 and you are going to see more specific results. Don’t search for the exact model, tip 4 will explain why.

4. Use Japanese. When I first opened a world of Japanese parts in 2015 I was Honda boy and one of things I wanted to find were parts for a Honda Prelude, well if you type Prelude in search, most likely there will be 0 results. In the end of the day if you translate Prelude to Japanese it might be different from what they mean. So where is the catch? プレリュード this is what you have to use. “Are you mad? How am I supposed to know that if I am not Japanese?”. Use Wikipedia. Open a car you have or want to find parts for and then somewhere you will find the correct Japanese name of it.

   

   

5. Use one supplier. If you are a seller of parts at where you are it would be a big win if you find a large supplier in Japan, you can find almost anything and then when you have bought lots of stuff we can arrange shipping that would be cheaper than if you would have ordered everything from different folks.

   

There are possibly some other ways to find stuff you need but in general this is just the basic idea of how it works. I wasn’t making this topic for you to grow your beard reading, it is a 5 minute tips to save a lot of your time.

Many people see no sense in Japanese auctions cause they use it the wrong way, don’t be a cave man and educate others.

P.S. Items You Cannot Import From Japan (More Like Export)

There are 2 items that are prohibited: Anything that includes seat belts or Airbags. Seats, Steering Wheels, Dashes, Interior stuff etc. So until you are not buying or looking to Buy something with those 2 evil things you are safe.
P.S. Most Recaro’s don’t have Airbags.