Yahoo! Japan launches English version of their auction site

Posted on December 15th, 2008 by Shunichi Arai

Yahoo! Japan Auction screen shot

Yahoo! Japan introduced an English version of Yahoo! Japan Auctions on October 10th, 2008. Its target audience is foreign residents in Japan who can communicate in basic Japanese but prefer to use an English interface.

Yahoo! Japan Auctions is the biggest Internet auction site in Japan.

The major drawback of the English site is that only items whose sellers have checked the 'display on English site' option are shown. Currently, only a few items are shown on the English site. Also, it is not possible to sell an item through the English site at the moment.

The English version of Yahoo! Japan Auctions is the opposite of Sekaimon [JP], a Japanese version of eBay.

[Updated] Yahoo! Japan made a quick decision to shut down the English version just after half an year. Release [J]

Author Information  Shunichi Arai is developing a product for his new stealth startup. Arai devotes his life to software business, reading, and salsa dancing. Arai also loves to learn other cultures and languages such as Korean.

Tags: Japan, New Service, Service // 3 Comments »

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  • http://auctions.nengun.com nengun

    As mentioned, the biggest problem is a very small percentage of sellers actually list on the International site, from what I have seen it would have been less than 1%.

    When this was first announced we were hoping to see something more interesting done in the translation/cross over side of things, perhaps bridging the language and shipping barriers.

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