Japan Rabbit

Japan Rabbit is the proxy buying counterpart to Blackship, run by the same company (White Rabbit Japan). Same warehouse, same support team, same shipping options. The difference is what they actually do for you. If you haven't read it yet, our Blackship guide explains the forwarding side in detail.

With Blackship, you get a Japanese address and you do the shopping yourself. With Japan Rabbit, the team places the order on your behalf. They pay the Japanese seller, deal with any seller messages, pick up items from physical stores if needed, and bid on Yahoo Auctions. You get a single invoice in US dollars and never have to touch a Japanese credit card form, a katakana checkout page, or a seller who only accepts furikomi bank transfers.

They've been doing this since 2005 (formerly known as White Rabbit Express) and have processed over 2 billion yen in orders for customers in 140 countries.

Most Japanese shops accept foreign cards these days, so for a normal order on Amazon Japan or CDJapan you don't need a proxy at all. Use Blackship or order directly.

A proxy makes sense when:

• The shop only accepts Japanese payment methods (cash on delivery, furikomi, konbini pay, or a Japan-issued card).
• You want to bid on Yahoo Auctions, which is essentially impossible to use without a Japanese phone number.
• You're buying from Mercari, Rakuma, or other private marketplaces that block foreign accounts.
• The item is only available in a physical store and you need someone to physically go pick it up.
• The shop's website is too complex to navigate, or the seller refuses to ship internationally even via a forwarder.
• You want to communicate with a private seller who doesn't speak English.

If none of those apply, save yourself the service fee and use Blackship instead.

The flow is straightforward, but slower than ordering directly because there's a human in the loop.

1. Sign up. Free account, no monthly fee. Verification is lighter than for Blackship because Japan Rabbit doesn't issue you an address.
2. Add the item to your cart. You paste the URL of any Japanese shop, auction, or marketplace listing into Japan Rabbit. The system pulls in the price and gives you an instant quote that includes the item, domestic shipping, and the service fee.
3. Pay upfront. You pay for the item, fees and Japanese domestic shipping right away in US dollars. International shipping is paid later, once the package is in their warehouse.
4. Japan Rabbit places the order. Their team handles the actual purchase. For pre-orders, they reserve it and pay when the item releases. For auctions, they bid for you up to the maximum you set.
5. Item arrives at the warehouse. You get notified, just like with Blackship.
6. Choose international shipping. Same options and process as Blackship: EMS, FedEx, DHL, or one of several Japan Post options. Pay shipping, get tracking, done.
7. Optional: move to Blackship. If you also have a Blackship account, you can move Japan Rabbit packages over for free and consolidate them with packages you ordered yourself. Useful for combining a Yahoo Auctions win with a regular CDJapan shipment.

This is where Japan Rabbit gets honest about how proxy services actually work: there's no clean published fee table, because the fee depends on what you're buying and where from. The instant quote in your cart shows you the exact number before you pay.

What we do know publicly:

• Most shops: a fixed plus variable fee per order, shown in your quote.
• Yahoo Auctions: flat 3.75 USD per item if you win, plus a 1.25 USD bidding fee charged whether you win or lose. So a successful bid costs 5 USD in fees total. A lost bid costs 1.25 USD.
• Auction deposit: for bids of 1,000 USD or more, Japan Rabbit holds a 100 USD deposit upfront. You get it back if you lose, or it's applied to your purchase if you win.
• Pre-orders: you pay for the item plus fees upfront, then international shipping later when the item releases. Useful but means your money is parked for months.
• In-store pickup: possible for items that can only be bought at physical stores or events. Extra fees apply, depending on the location and effort.
• Storage: 45 days free, then daily fees that scale with package size (same rates as Blackship).
• Optional services: photo requests, express processing, splitting packages, discreet packaging. All charged per use.

The takeaway: don't expect a 3% commission like a forwarding service. A proxy service charges meaningfully more, because someone is actually doing manual work for every order.

This is one of the main reasons people use Japan Rabbit, so it's worth understanding properly.

Japan Rabbit's bidding system is not live. You set your maximum bid, and their team enters it into Yahoo Auctions for you. You can't react to the auction in real time the way you can on eBay.

Because of this, you should always enter your true maximum bid up front, not a low starting bid you plan to raise later. Yahoo Auctions uses an automatic incremental bidding system, which means:

• Even if you enter a high max bid, you only end up paying enough to beat the next highest bidder, plus a small increment.
• If you start low and try to raise your bid later, you may already have lost.

The increment scales with the current bid: 100 yen jumps when the price is between 1,000 and 5,000 yen, 500 yen between 10,000 and 50,000 yen, 1,000 yen above that.

If an item has a "Buy It Now" price (the orange button labeled 今すぐ落札), and that price is within your budget, just enter the Buy It Now price as your max bid. That guarantees you the item and skips the auction entirely.

You can change your max bid up until 6 PM Japan time on the day the auction ends. After that, it's locked.

There's also a 100% money-back guarantee on Yahoo Auctions: if Japan Rabbit fails to win the auction for you, you get a full refund except for the 1.25 USD bidding fee.

Japan Rabbit offers more shipping methods than Blackship because they handle the warehouse side directly. Available options:

• Japan Post: EMS, ePacket, Small Packet SAL, Parcel Post Airmail, Parcel Post SAL, Seamail
• FedEx: International Priority
• DHL: Global Express

Same caveat as everywhere else: EMS to Germany is currently not available. Your realistic options to Germany are FedEx, DHL, or one of the slower Japan Post airmail variants.

The shipping calculator on their site lets you estimate before you commit.

Same setup as Blackship: 45 days free, then daily storage fees by package size (around 0.15 USD per day for an extra small package, up to 1.20 USD per day for an extra large one).

If you don't ship or dispose of an item within the storage period, it can eventually be forfeited. So if you're using pre-orders that release months from now, plan ahead and don't let items pile up.

Japan Rabbit declares the customs value as the actual price of the items, excluding their service fees and Japanese domestic shipping. They mark packages as "Merchandise," not "Gift," so don't ask them to under-declare. You're responsible for whatever VAT and clearance fees the courier charges on delivery (19% VAT in Germany, plus around 6 USD DHL handling fee).

They are not registered for IOSS, so for EU customers there is no option to prepay VAT. You always pay it on delivery.

Credit cards only: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, Diners, Discover. No PayPal. All amounts in US dollars, regardless of where you live. Your bank converts to your local currency at whatever rate it uses, just like with Blackship.

For pre-orders and auctions, the item cost is held against your card upfront. International shipping is charged separately when you actually ship.

If Japan Rabbit can't successfully buy the item you requested, you don't pay anything for it (except the 1.25 USD bidding fee for lost auctions). This matters because for sold-out items, limited editions, or auction listings that get cancelled, you're not stuck paying for a service that didn't deliver.

It's slower than direct shopping. Every order goes through their team. Even a simple Amazon Japan order can take a day or two before it's actually placed. Time-sensitive drops and limited releases that sell out in minutes are tough to catch through any proxy.

Service fees add up. A 5 USD fee per Yahoo Auctions item is fine for a 200 USD vinyl record, but it's a real percentage hit on a 10 USD trading card. Combine items from the same source where you can.

Communication has limits. Japan Rabbit can relay messages between you and a Japanese seller (especially useful on Mercari and Yahoo Auctions for asking questions about condition). But they're not a translation service, and complex back-and-forth slows things down.

Customs value can't be lowered. Some other proxies will under-declare on request. Japan Rabbit will not. If you're buying expensive items, factor in the full VAT and import fee.

Holds are real money. Auction deposits and pre-order payments tie up your money until the item ships, sometimes for months. If you're patient, no problem. If you need cash flow, plan accordingly.

Use Japan Rabbit when you genuinely can't place the order yourself. Yahoo Auctions, Mercari, in-store pickups, sellers who refuse foreign cards, niche shops with Japanese-only checkouts. For everything else, Blackship is cheaper because you skip the buying fee entirely.

A common pattern: people use Blackship as their default and only fall back to Japan Rabbit for specific items they can't get any other way. Since both services share a warehouse, you can mix purchases from both into a single international shipment. If you haven't set up a forwarding address yet, see our Blackship guide first.