Ordering Food from Japan Using Rakuten Global Shipping

I was in Japan for November and December of 2022. It was SO NICE to be back after a 3 year delay because of Covid. The コンビニ (connivence store) food there speaks to my soul. Almost every night I found myself getting snacks from the Family Mart around the corner and a vending machine no more than 50ft from ym front door.

After being gone for 3 years, then making it a daily part of my life, it was ROUGH to go home and not have it any more 😆. So I started getting desperate and looked for places to buy some grub online. In the past, I’ve used Sugoi Mart but between the item cost and the shipping, they are pretty expensive. Not to mention that for my last order they never shipped half of it and blamed it on customs. They did return my money but the whole thing was a hassle.

So instead, I decided to try Rakuten Global Express. Rakuten is kinda like Japan’s Amazon and RGE (Rakuten Global Express) is a service where you ship stuff you bought from Rakuten to their warehouse, and then they ship it to you.

So the 2 things I missed the most were energy drinks (particularly Real Gold) and Curry Cup of Noodles. For both items I couldn’t find a place to buy them in the US. There are Curry Cup of Noodles in the US but they are different enough from the real deal that I didn’t want to settle.

So I ordered a box of XX Real Gold cans and a box of XX Curry Cup of Noodles.

Real Gold Box Cost: $20.42
Price Per Can: $0.68

Curry Cup of Noodles Box Cost: $29.04
Price Per Cup: $1.45

Those were shipped to RGE and then I started to process to have them shipped to me. The REALLY unfortunate part was that there are multiple ways to ships items, and when I did the quote price tool, I got something like this:

So when it came time to choose my shipping, “Super Express” was not an option. Which stinks because it’s cheaper and gets there faster! I was told it was because the contents of what I was shipping. Was it the drinks? Food? Both? I don’t know.

It was a lot to pay for shipping but I had already paid for the 2 boxes of snacks and I was too addicted to think clearly. So I paid it 😄

About 8 days later my goods arrived and they were glorious! I don’t know exactly the break down of if the weight of the drinks or the size of the noodles cost more but if I just take the total shipping cost $252.75 and divide it by 50 items, I get that shipping for each item was $5.05.

So in the end, I now owned 30 cans of Real Gold that cost me $5.73 a piece. And 20 Curry Cup of Noodles that cost me $6.50 a piece. Which is cheaper to what I could have got them for from Sugoi Mart, but since receiving them over a month ago, they have started to lose their magic as I just have too many of them.

So in the end, I probably wouldn’t do it again BUT, it’s nice to know that if I ever REALLY want something directly from Japan and I’m willing to pay through the nose for shipping, I got a fairly simple option.