Japan's e-commerce market, in English, every week.
We monitor Japan's e-commerce and retail market — marketplace moves, pricing shifts, regulation, and category trends — and deliver it in plain English on a weekly cadence, so your team doesn't have to read Japanese or chase scattered sources.
Japan's market moves in Japanese. The fee change, the new import rule, the category that's suddenly selling — it's public information, and it's all in a language your team can't read.
So you find out late — from a competitor, a shipment that got held up, or a margin that quietly disappeared. Keeping a person on Japanese-language sources is expensive; not keeping one is a blind spot. OtayoriJapan is the third option.
What you actually get out of it.
Not "more content." Fewer surprises, fewer wasted hours, and decisions made on this week's facts instead of last quarter's.
Never miss a change that costs money
A marketplace fee hike, a new resale or import rule, a platform policy shift — we surface it the week it happens, while you can still act on it.
Skip the Japanese-reading headcount
No in-house Japanese speaker and no research-agency retainer just to keep one eye on the market. One subscription does the watching.
Source and price on current facts
Buying, pricing, and inventory calls backed by what's moving in Japan this week — commodity prices, category demand, new entrants — not stale assumptions.
Get an hour back, every week
One structured English read, delivered on schedule, instead of hunting across ministry pages, marketplace notices, and Japanese press yourself.
Two deliverables. Take one or both.
OtayoriJapan is built around two things — a read and the underlying data — so you can go as deep as your team needs.
The read
A curated, English-language summary of the week's notable moves in Japan's e-commerce and retail market — written for people who need the signal, not the noise, and don't have time to monitor Japanese-language sources themselves.
The numbers
On the Pro plan, each brief ships with a weekly CSV export of the items we tracked — one row per item with date, category, title, summary, source, and an impact tag — so your team can filter and file the week's signals in a spreadsheet instead of re-typing them from prose.
The discipline
Every item in the brief is dated and sourced. We'd rather send a shorter report with fewer, well-sourced items than pad it with anything we can't stand behind.
The signals that move a Japan-facing business.
Every week we watch official Japanese sources across four areas and pull out what actually affects people buying, selling, or sourcing Japanese goods.
Platform & fee moves
Rakuten, Mercari, Amazon Japan, Yahoo — fee changes, campaigns, new features, and policy shifts that hit your margin and your listings.
Rules & compliance
Resale and secondhand-goods rules, import/export and customs, consumption tax, and product-safety requirements that affect what you can ship and sell.
Prices & commodities
What's moving in price — from staple food commodities to collectible categories — with the official statistics behind the number, not a rumor.
Demand & new entrants
Categories that are heating up, products that are selling, and new players entering the market — the early signals before they're obvious abroad.
From Japanese sources to your inbox.
A monitoring pipeline does the collecting; a person does the judgment. You get the result, already in English.
We monitor
Official Japanese sources — ministries, marketplaces, statistics, and press — watched every day, automatically.
We translate & structure
The week's notable changes are turned into plain English — each item dated, sourced, and tagged for impact.
You get the brief
One weekly email: the signal, not the noise. On Pro, the underlying items arrive as a CSV you can filter.
You act
Source, price, and plan on current facts — and forward the items that matter to the rest of your team.
Built for teams that trade on Japan without reading it.
Selling Japanese goods abroad
You source Japanese products — snacks, stationery, apparel, collectibles — and resell them. Fee, price, and rule changes in Japan land directly on your margin.
Curating Japan for a global audience
You run a Japan subscription box or specialty store and need to know what's selling, what's launching, and what's moving in price — every week, not every quarter.
Advising on the Japan market
You help clients enter or understand Japan. A continuously updated, sourced English feed is raw material your team would otherwise assemble by hand.
Read a full sample before you sign up.
No signup required to look at the format, the depth, and the sourcing style. The sample is a real, full-length weekly brief — not a stripped-down teaser.
Two plans. No calls required to start.
Cancel anytime from your account or by emailing us — see the Terms for details.
For teams that need the weekly read.
- Weekly English-language brief
- Delivered by email every week
- Sourced and dated items only
- Async-first — no calls required
For teams that file the week's signals in a spreadsheet.
- Everything in Starter
- Weekly CSV export of tracked items (date, category, title, summary, source, impact tag)
- Priority topic requests by email
- Async-first — no calls required
- API / other delivery formats: coming soon — email us to register interest
Prices shown are introductory and may change. Existing subscribers are notified by email before any change takes effect.
Questions we get asked.
Do you do calls?
No — we run async-first. Everything is delivered and handled over email: the weekly brief, the CSV export, plan changes, and support requests. If something needs more back-and-forth than email allows, we'll say so.
How is the data sourced?
From publicly available Japanese-language sources — marketplaces, retailer and ministry sites, and public statistics — read and translated into a structured English summary each week. Every item in the brief is dated and sourced.
How is this different from Google Translate or a Japan news feed?
Both give you raw volume in the wrong shape. We do the selection — deciding which of the week's changes actually affect a Japan-facing business — and deliver it already structured, dated, and impact-tagged. You get judgment, not a translation firehose.
Can I see a sample before subscribing?
Yes — see the sample report above. It's a full weekly brief, not a shortened preview.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time, effective at the end of the current billing period. See our Terms for the full cancellation and refund policy.
Get the next weekly brief.
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