I'm trying to purchase an album at a Japanese doujin web shop, and the only method of payment they accept is a money transfer to a Japan Post bank account.

Has anyone outside of Japan successfully made a purchase in this way?  If so, was it easy enough that you'd recommend it, or was the purchase more hassle than it was worth?  I do see that I can send money to such an account via international wire, though the wire fee would be ~4x the cost of the purchase - which makes this not a great option.

As a side note: I'm surprised at the number of shops which don't accept globally standard forms of payment (VISA, Mastercard, PayPal), don't ship outside of Japan, etc.

Can you ask if they accept money orders? Usually when I dealt directly with artists and they didn't accept some form of electric payment (i.e. Paypal or CC) they were always open to this.

Good idea, I'll try that.

This worked perfectly; the seller was happy to accept an international postal money order.  Much appreciate the suggestion.