Yahoo has recently introduced their "International" website for auctions which is done in English. You can see the website here. It's a pretty low grade site considering Yahoo's standing in the web world, but I suppose you have to start somewhere. The site isn't really a place to buy items since they don't have much in terms of selection. As I said in another article it's mostly a place where you can sign up and create a Yahoo basic account in English.
Video
I have a video which talks about creating an account on the English site which you can see here. The purpose is to show how to create an account but I show some of the problems with the English website overall in the video as well.
Screenshots
Below you can see some of the screens from the new website as of July 2009:
One thing you should understand is that the site is made for English speakers in Japan, not for foreigners living overseas. Most of the hurdles to using Yahoo are still present on the "international" site as they are on the regular site. The only difference is that they have English to guide you through the process.
Mostly foreigners can use the site to sign up for a basic account. The signup process is entirely in English and you can create an account pretty easily by entering in some basic information. If you need a Japanese zip code, just use "1234567". Once you create an account on the English site you can head over to the Japanese site and have full access to the products there. Why would you do that?
What are the benefits?
The English site only has items where the Seller has opted to click on a box and write an English description. That's it. Other than that, there is nothing beneficial to the English site overall. It doesn't mean they'll accept any payment method that you can offer, and it also doesn't mean that they ship overseas. It just means they entered in some text, no matter how small or insignificant, into the English description box. Most of the English descriptions you'll find don't contain any real information beyond a few sentences. After browsing around for a while I only ran across a handfull of sellers who 1) ship internationally and 2) wrote relevant details in the description like international shipping prices and payment processes that you'll be able to use. Their prices were much higher because they knew they were selling to foreigners.
Searching
To give you an example, a search for "Sega Saturn" yielded no results at all. A search for "Neo Geo" got one result where the Seller wrote the names of the games (Playstation games) in English with nothing else. Searching for "Gibson" had no guitar results and neither did "bearbrick" or "be@rbrick." These are itmes that have hundreds or thousands of search results on the Japanese site, even if you use the English words. A search for "playstation", a word that has thousands of results on the regular Japanese site, had a grand total of 2 results on the English site. Both auctions were from one Seller and again the English description only had the names of the names in English. You still have to pay into a Japanese bank account and there's no information about international shipping.
What can you use the site for?
Again, the site can be used to create a basic Yahoo account. From there you can go over to the Japanese site and log in. You cannot get a Premium account and bid more than 4,999 yen on either site. They offer to let you register a credit card but at the time of this writing they don't accept any foreign credit cards. It doesn't even transfer over your watchlist over from the Japanese site so there's no real benefit to using the account functions on the English site.
Future prospects for the site...
It's listed as a Beta Version, but in the end there's not much they're going to be able to do. The entire process of opening up Yahoo's site to foreigners starts and ends at the level of the Seller. They are the ones who have to choose to do international shipping. They are the ones who will have to choose to accept a payment like PayPal and open themselves up to chargebacks. They will be the ones who have to choose to conduct transactions in English or languages other than Japanese. Yahoo can't force them to do any of that. They can make each process easier, but in the end it's a choice the Seller has to make and a vast majority of Japanese people just won't see the benefit of taking on that risk. I've seen a handful of auctions where the Seller does list international shipping and he does accept PayPal, but the prices of the auctions are gnerally higher, closer to eBay prices. It's not the kind of situation that foreigners are looking for.
