Authentic Anime Merch & Japanese Products

By a hot August 2016 night in Osaka, the 3 founders, 3 expat friends in Japan, met over refreshing drinks.

Comfortably seated in an Izakaya (traditional Japanese restaurant), they came to talk about the fact that they were all spending a lot of time shopping for their friends and family, who were constantly asking them to ship Japanese products back to their home country.

Japanese goods are loved all over the world. Especially for those who are passionate about Japanese culture and even more so if they had the opportunity to discover certain products directly in Japan.

Unfortunately (or not), Japan remains a very closed country. It manufactures its own products and does not export much. The only way to get Japanese products is often to know someone in Japan, and to ask him to shop for you and to ship them to you. But not everyone knows someone in Japan, especially someone who is willing to do that for you.

That’s from this observation that Ichiba Japan is born.

The idea, at the beginning, was very basic and the concept not clearly defined. No website, not even a Facebook page. Customers came to us through word of mouth, and they would receive our Japanese products proposals by email.

Our community grew quickly, and soon, one particular type of product stood out for its number of recurring requests. Anime merch and Japanese toys, most particularly, Pokémon products!

Pokémon has been a huge success around the world, and continues to be popular today, especially with collectors. And it’s understandable, many products are rare and hard to find, even in Japan!

But thanks to our Otaku network and assisted by our Japanese friends, we have built up a team of Ninja Shoppers, able to find the latest items hidden in the stock of the small stores in Akihabara.

We are still focused on Pokémon until today, but we plan very soon to extend our catalog to other popular Japanese anime franchises, and in a more distant future (but not that much) to propose other kind of Japanese products (snacks, drinks, decoration, etc…), less related to the anime universe, but still very impregnated with the Japanese spirit.

Our ambition is now clear: Ichiba Japan aims to become the number one online store for authentic Anime Merch and other Japanese Products, shipped directly from Japan to the World.