http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/a … _deal.html

Oh that is awesome.  I just wish we didn't have to wait so long to get to bid on Japanese stuff!

That depends if the seller still wants to ship overseas.

Yea, and even so, how would they sort out the language barrier?  eBay's various sites work because they all use Latin alphabets... how could they put Y!J's Japanese text auctions alongside that?  Would they expect to tell Japanese sellers to stop listing in Japanese to have an eBay-accessible listing?  Would they use a translation service that worked in every search?  I have my doubts as to how this thing would work!

Many Asians (and any humans, actually) don't have much trouble gaining rudimentary reading and speaking ability in English, so there is no reason why speakers of European languages can't acquire some ability in Asian languages. It's really not difficult; you just have to stop having fun for a while and do a little work.

I agree, but do you seriously expect eBay to request its users to list auctions in Japanese?  I mean, most North American auctions I see don't even have proper English in them!  Asking an average English speaker to write 'tres bon etat' in their listing is one thing, asking them to use an IME when they don't even know what one is is another.

I'm thinking this is probably going to be handled a lot like how international auctions are handled now.

The seller can specify that their item ships to wherever, and write their description in whatever languages they want. It's up the the buyers to make sense of the listing and decide whether they should bid or not.

There's no reason why Japanese sellers will have to state that they're willing to ship to North America, just as there's no reason why we have to specify that we're willing to ship to Japan.

And those of us who have sold any reasonable number of items have doubtlessly dealt with French, German, Spanish, and whatever buyers, and we've worked through the language issues well enough.

Heck, those of us on these forums have probably all purchased stuff from YHJ before, so it's not like the language barrier will affect us in any meaningful way -- if we really want something, we'll find a way to make our desires known and qualified with cash.

Not so fast.  I am a long-time StC, and I have never directly bought anything from YHJ.  I have had to use Jerold for that.
The language barrier is an issue for some of us.  Let's not belittle that point.

This joint agreement between eBay and YHJ will at least make YHJ listing easier to access.

.

"And those of us who have sold any reasonable number of items have doubtlessly dealt with French, German, Spanish, and whatever buyers, and we've worked through the language issues well enough."

No, but, I'm still not getting how they're going to resolve having auctions on a site which uses only Roman letters to a site which uses Japanese alphabets as well as Roman letters and non-common Unicode characters (music symbols anyone?).  Basically if any Japanese seller wanted to sell something with the hope of an international audience,  they'd have to fit the title description, at least, with a fair amount of English so it would be picked up on a search.  Theres less of a difference for an English speaker listing an auction that German-speakers, French-speakers, etc., find as opposed to listing for a Japanese speaker.  I guess what I'm saying, is I'm just a little sceptical that we'll have auctions saying: "新品/new/neuf/neu ゼルダの伝説 LEGEND OF ZELDA SFC/SNES BUY IT NOW 快買"

And of course, to the earlier posters, learning languages is fun, and I certainly think learning some basic Japanese is not difficult (especially after studying Chinese for two years, geez!)  Believe me, I'm the last person to encourage blatant monolingualism!

EDIT: by the way, I'm taking a guess that 快買 is an equivalent to Buy it Now in Japanese.  Correct me if I messed up

Woah, that's a bombshell, and one that'll likely have a lot of damage along with it 
I'd like to hope for the best outcome on this, but I can also envision a huge mess very quickly

have ADV or Disney do the subtitles

</sarcasm>

I'm just arguing that this is irrelevant. Chances are that many of them will still prefer to sell things within their own country, and I don't think this move is going to change that -- it'll just add another option for those who don't care where their money comes from.

For those of us who know what we want, finding the proper kanji is generally no more difficult than a catalogue search on Neowing or Amazon Japan, and other mapping methods exist for other types of items.

Okay, fair enough. But you have, I assume, at least used some sort of automatic translation utility to narrow down your search results before presenting the auction listings to Jerold.

Actually, no. ^^;;;  No automatic translation utility.  I did it the hard way.

In dealing with Jerold, I either gave him an English name or a catalog number.  He would figure out the kanji needed on YJA.  On a few occasions, I went to J.G.M.L., and looked up the catalog number, and got the kanji and pasted that into YJA looking for hits.  Then, I would give the listing to Jerold.  I have never used an automated translator or a middleman site like shoppingmalljapan.com.  I was willing to pay someone else to figure out the translation. ^^;;;

Then I both lose and find myself at a loss for words. This point is definitely yours.

I don't think you need to be embarrassed to admit this...that's how I've always done MY auctions when dealing with a middleman. I figured out early on the kanji needed for the series, artists, etc. that I was looking for, then would copy and paste that into the search box. The only time I used an online translator was to figure out what was being said in the auction description (and I learned rather fast what the kanji for "obi" was and thusly to look out for sentences that pretty much said "obi wa arimasen" ^_~ ).

I think the YJ/eBay "merger" is an intriguing idea, but I am concerned about the language barrier. Sure they may offer translation services, but I'm thinking about auctions that use katakana. I was already stymied by Square Enix's new game "Lord of Vermilion"...reading the katakana for the first word, "ROODO," I thought the title was "ROAD of Vermilion" at first.