Buying the Manga

IMPORTANT NOTE: Note that I have no association with any of the companies listed here. I only list them for convenience. And while I have odered manga from them in the past, I can't guarrantee you any successes. If you have problems with any of the merchants listed here, please contact me.

The best discussion of buying manga that I've read is at www.animesuki.com They list several places where you can buy manga world wide. Unfortunately Mahoraba seems to be a little bit difficult to find.

Normally I would suggest buying the manga from www.yesasia.com since it is very popular, relatively cheap and they have free shipping. However, they only stock the Chinese translation of volume #1. So don't buy that!!! I have heard that they are pretty good about ording in stock that they don't have, so you could try to contact them. If you successfully buy this manga there, please contact me.

A mail order bookstore that claims to have the book is www.sasugabooks.com Since this is the only english language website that I can find which has the book for a reasonable price, this is my recommendation for now.

Another recomended site would be www.nippon-export.com, here the price is not that reasonable but it's not as bad as in the next site, the shipping costs are not invarible with weight so be sure to use their shipping costs calculator, you can expect about 1,200 yen, $12 these days.

The last place I know to get this manga is www.amazon.co.jp. And as you can see, it's there. One downside is that the website is mostly in Japanese. They do have English on most of the pages, but one critical page is still in Japanese only. I will help you through that page below. The other downside is the cost.

The shipping charge was high but now is... yeah you guessed right, now is worse. Since March, 7, 2007 international economy shipping is not available, given the actual shipping rates it will cost you 2,700 yen if you live in North America and 3,400! if you're from Europe, add 300 more per item for handling and thats how deep the hole in your pocket will be, that said if you don't mind the extra charge Amazon is very convenient.

If you live in North America you will also probably have to pay customs and brokerage fees, in Europe I think you wont have to pay customs for books, that will reduce the gap with North Americans to about $2. For example, if you live in North America, shipping for 1 manga will cost $27, $3 for handling, and let's say $5 for customs and brokerage fees. The manga costs about $5.80 by itself, so the grand total will be about $40. It will take 2 to 5 days for delivery.

Welcome to the world of buying Japanese manga! Yes, it's expensive, but you can mitigate the costs somewhat if you buy many manga. Usually I buy 10 manga at a time. Since the shipping charge is invariate for that many manga, I only have to pay the handling fee of $3 per book. This means that my net cost is about $120, or $12 per manga. Since translated manga costs $15 here, I think that's not a bad price. I still recommend going with Sasuga books at the moment, but I usually buy from Amazon since I know how long it will take to arrive.

To buy the book from Amazon, all you have to do is add it to your cart. Once you've done that, you can click on "Proceed to checkout". At this point it will ask you for your account details. You will notice the page is in Japanese. But up near the top you will see a link that says "To translate this page in English, click here". Click there, and it's easy after that.