This Quick Tour shows a few sample screenshots so you can see what's what at Rakuten Ichiba even when everything is in Japanese.

There are three basic types of pages that you must deal with. Once you familiarize yourself with these pages, it should be pretty easy to find things in any auction category.

Our ProxyShop Rakuten Ichiba page has direct links to the best categories in their flea market section selling used goods. From there, you will come across the following types of pages:

Thumbnail View
This page displays thumbnails of items in a specific category (the sample screenshot shows fine-art photo books). The Thumbnail View is the most convenient way to find what you want. You can browse items by looking at the thumbnail images instead of the Japanese text titles. It's much faster to identify an item by looking at the image instead of the text title.

However, many sellers do not provide images so you won't see those items in the Thumbnail View. If you can read Japanese, click on the Photos & text link to see all the items.

Each thumbnail is captioned with the item name and current price. If you see something that interests you, click on the thumbnail to see the item page.

Most of the items have fixed "buy now" prices. There aren't so many auctions. Fixed-price items are indicated by a blue price tag icon, and auctions are indicated by a pink hammer icon next to the item name.

The meanings of the icons used at Rakuten are as follows:

Price tag: A fixed-price item (non-auction).
Hammer: Auction item.
Lightbulb: Recommended item.
Camera: Displayed in the Text Only view to indicate that a sample image is provided.
Handshake: Item already sold and no longer available.
Storefront: Seller is a real store. Will likely charge 5% tax.
Man: Seller is an individual.
Talking head: Price negotiable.
Boxing glove: Auction item with "buy now" price.

Item page
There are two kinds of item pages. One is for fixed-price items and the other is for auction items.

The fixed-price item page is easy to figure out. On the screenshot, you can see where the price is and any sample image(s). There's no time limit for the seller to keep a fixed-price item online at Rakuten Ichiba. If the item has been sold, you will see the handshake icon.

The auction item page has auction info similar to Yahoo! Japan Auctions. You must learn to recognize the current price and the time left in the auction. The time left will be in days or hours or minutes. If you can recognize the kanji characters for days, hours, and minutes, you can tell which is which:

The current bid is in yen and does not include any taxes nor shipping.

Scroll down the item page to see the item's sample image(s) if any.

After you examine the fixed-price item or auction and decide that you want to buy it or place a bid, copy and paste the item page's URL on our order form. We will then send you a price quote.

After we receive your payment, we will buy the item or place a bid for you. Our auction name for Rakuten Ichiba is photojpn.

That's it for this Quick Tour. Now go to our ProxyShop Rakuten Ichiba page.