Zenmarket Haul - AKB48, Morning Musume, Momoiro Clover Z, MOMOLAND & m.o.v.e

After writing that title, I realised it was almost artists that start with the letter M! So I got another CD haul from Zenmarket last month and got some great new additions to my J-Pop collection. Last year I did get a large number of albums from Zenmarket but never ended up posting them on here. Maybe I'll do my CD collection posts later on this year and add them to that. 

This order I focused mainly on AKB48 releases as there was a number of singles I was interested in collecting. Then there was also some harder to find albums that I have been searching for that I managed to find selling on Yahoo Auctions which is the platform I use to buy all my CD's from in Japan. Here are all the items I received in this order from Zenmarket! 

Starting off with the large collection of AKB48 singles I brought from this one seller. They were selling a set of 20 singles for 400JPY. Absolutely insane and all of them were brand new and unopened. So I couldn't say no to this deal as it contained quite a few singles I had been wanting. Sustainable was the main one I have been looking for as I really enjoy this song and it feels like a true AKB48 song to me. There was one song on Negaigoto no mochigusare that I like from hearing the JKT48 version of it. I had originally brought this CD last year but sadly it got cancelled by Zenmarket due to issues with the seller. So it was nice to finally receive one. All of the below singles are the theater or shop editions which are usually the ones I collect.

After that massive lot of singles, I brought even more AKB48 singles! I had been wanting to get Ponytail to shushu for a while now as I love the Majijo Teppen Blues song. It's so dramatic and amazing to listen to and the part with Takahashi Minami is my favourite. Also brought a set that had some random singles in it mainly because I was looking for the Heavy Rotation CD which is the one in the case. A big thank you to Zemarket for helping with this specific item as they helped out with this a request I had regarding this item. Super helpful and great communication with everything! These were also all new sealed singles which are super easy to find with AKB48 as fans often bulk buy the CD's and rarely open them.

Zenmarket Haul - Found New Treasures!

I went into 2024 with the intention of not purchasing any Japanese releases this year due to shipping costs. This was until I was having a bad week and thought bugger it, I'm doing it! Luckily the Japanese Yen was a good rate so I got some bargains and didn't lose out too much on conversion between the currencies. For this order, I focused on getting releases that were exclusive to Japan and not available on any streaming services. The service I used was Zenmarket of course and it was a simple process. Shipping wasn't too bad with the final cost of shipping it here being around $45 and I received it within two weeks. Everything was packed perfectly with lots of bubble wrap and no damages! In total, I ordered 25 CDs which is a good number and it was about $240 for all of this including all the fees and shipping within Japan.

Starting off with the main reason I placed this order which was these albums from m.o.v.e! I have been addicted to these albums for a while now and unfortunately they are hard to listen to here in Australia. The group isn't on Spotify nor does Australian iTunes have these specific releases. It has the singles but not the albums! So I was always listening to them on YouTube until I got sick of that and needed the physical CDs. These were various levels of difficult to get with their first album being the easiest and their third having barely any listings. So excited to have these in my collection and they sound amazing! In clockwise order from the left side, the albums I got from m.o.v.e where electrock, worlds of the mind and Operation Overload 7.

This was kind of an impulse buy as I love one particular song on this dream world album which is King & Queen. dream music is always difficult to come across and I thought I'd get the physical one as I enjoy the songs on this one. It was a pain to find as the title is so vague and I had to go through so many listings of other things to find this. Thank heavens the cover is red otherwise I wouldn't see the listings. Originally I wanted just the standard CD version but couldn't find one as all the listings were for the limited one. I wasn't too sure if the box was big or not however it is a decent size and you get lots of fun inclusions. There was even a calendar that I didn't know about!

CD Japan Review

Finally caved in and tried out CDJapan for the first time and let's just say I was impressed! The turning point for me to finally order something off the site was that you got a external bonus if you brought Dream Ami's new single from there. So that's what I brought along with a E-girls single I was missing from my collection.

CDJapan is a online store based in Japan that sells a variety of items from CD's, DVD's, gadgets, figures, etc. There's plenty of things to explore on the site and they even have services called Proxy Pickup where you can purchase concert goods. For example, you can currently place pre-orders for items from TWICE's Japan dome tour and most stuff was sold out so it seems to be popular. I only really collect CD's and DVD's so that's what this review will be about.

From the site, I brought Dream Ami's latest single Good Goodbye in the CD Only edition and E-girls first single Celebration! in the CD Only edition. If you purchase first press or place pre-orders on CDJapan, you will get a little bonus! For the Dream Ami single, I got a poster as an external bonus and another example is MOMOLAND's Japanese single I'm So Hot comes with a special photocard if you purchase it from CDJapan whilst the offer is available. CDJapan seems to be one of the only sites left with brand new copies of the earlier E-girls singles and I rarely see used copies of them on Zenmarket. So that's why I brought the Celebration! one from here and it was reasonably priced.

CDJapan has a great points system where you accumulate points when you purchase items or when certain events occur such as your birthday or coupons. The site offers some good deals during the year as well such as spend a certain amount and get a coupon for 200JPY off. I feel CDJapan has better deals than YesAsia as it encourages you to continue making purchases through the site. For example, I have quite a few points already which I can use to get savings off my next purchase. Or bonuses are always a great incentive! I'd rather spend a little bit more and get a fun item for my collection than buying Japanese releases off YesAsia.

Now for a quick look at the two CD's I brought! First off is E-girls first single Celebration! which is a trip back in time. All the members look so young and different! This single is one of my favourites as I love the songs Celebration! and Dreaming Girls. The later was meant to have a physical release for dream (the group that sings it) but it was cancelled and the song eventually ended up on here.

Next is Dream Ami's latest single Good Goodbye which is my favourite Dream Ami single ever now. Love the single design, love the songs and love the instrumentals. Everything is perfect with it except for one thing. Can you guess it? If you've seen all my other Dream Ami posts, you'll probably know whats missing and it's the one thing I love the most about her releases. It seems this edition comes without the cardboard sleeve!! No!!! I was so disappointed when I saw it and I was rather confused at why it was omitted. After some searching on Instagram, it seems only the CD+DVD edition comes with the cardboard sleeve. I feel rhythm zone has been dropping the ball with the last few of Ami's releases. First we get less versions (i.e. no One Coin anymore) and now the CD Only edition has no cover. It's not the biggest deal in the universe, I just loved the cardboard sleeves and it made all her singles look amazingly aesthetic on my shelf. Now this single looks out of place with the others. Well I'll just have to wait till her next release to see what the next design will be. Anyway, this single is amazing and I love all the songs!! I got a cute poster with the single which is the promo picture Ami was using to promote the single.

Zenmarket Haul - E-girls Albums

My recent order from Zenmarket has officially taken the crown of being my favourite thing ordered online. I recently won an auction on Zenmarket for a set that contained three E-girls albums but not just any albums. The albums were the 2CD+3DVD+Photobook versions of some albums I had been wanting for years. So firstly, here are the three albums I received in the set: E.G Time, E.G. Smile- E-girls Best- and E.G. Crazy.

E.G. Crazy, E.G. Smile E-girls Best & E.G. Time

Now I had been after these versions of the albums for years but never brought them as they are quite expensive brand new. The E.G. Crazy version is 6980JPY which is about $100AUD for me. The albums I received are about around the 6000JPY mark so quite pricey as well. So how I ended up with this set was that I was scrolling through Zenmarket one day and came across a listing for all three of these albums for a starting price of 2000JPY. I was the first bidder and the auction ended up having 8 bids. It was the first time I had bidded against other people so that was nerve wracking. And to make it more difficult, I was also in the outback at the time and luckily near somewhere that I could connect to mobile data to bid. So it was an adventure to get these but I'm over the moon to finally have them and the final auction price was 3350JPY (without fees and shipping). I had recently won some credit from Zenmarket so it was exciting to spend the credit on something that was the whole reason I started using Zenmarket for in the first place.

Back covers of the albums

Side view of the albums

I'll quickly go through the albums I received and will be posting more detailed reviews of the albums in the future. First off, here is the E.G. Crazy 2CD+3DVD+Photobook version. I already owned this album digitally but wanted this version for my collection. It comes with the 2CD's which are the album and 3DVD's. The first DVD is the music videos and the other two are concert DVD's. This album was the largest of the three and came with the original plastic wrapping.

Zenmarket Haul - KARA & E-girls

Another one of my orders arrived yesterday. Like the last one, the tracking was acting weird so I wasn't expecting it at all. More on that later, so here's the singles I got in my Zenmarket order! I got five Japanese singles from KARA and 3 singles from E-girls.

My Zenmarket order!

I was super happy with this order as it had quite a few items in it that I wanted for my collection. The order was made up of two orders, the KARA one and the E-girls one. The order was consolidated into one package which is a feature you can do with Zenmarket. I have written a review of Zenmarket and it's services here if you would like to know more about the service. The singles and which versions they are I received are as follows:

• E-girls - Go! Go! Let's Go! (CD Only)
• E-girls - Pink Champagne (CD Only)
• E-girls - E.G. Summer RIDER (CD Only)
• KARA - Jumping (CD+DVD Version)
• KARA - Jet Coaster Love (CD Only First Press Version)
• KARA - Speed Up/Girls Power (CD+DVD Version B)
• KARA - Bye Bye Happy Days! (CD+DVD Version A)
• KARA - Thank You Summer Love (CD Only First Press Version)

The KARA set was an amazing deal! It had a variety of versions of the singles and I was excited to see that the CD Only versions were the First Press Versions! I wasn't sure when I saw the listings and was hoping they were those versions as you get the bonus track. So that was a surprise when I opened them up. The other ones are CD+DVD versions which are always fun to collect. Now I can add these to my KARA single collection which is only Mamma Mia so far. I wanting to collect the entire collection of their singles which is going to take a while haha.

Front covers

Back covers

Zenmarket Review - J-Pop Paradise!

As an avid J-Pop fan, I'm always on the lookout for singles and albums to add to my collection. It can be difficult to track down older or more expensive titles online, but recently I've discovered a new service to purchase CD's from. For about the past year, I've been looking into using a shopping service in Japan to purchase CD's from and found there was quite a few available. During my research, I came across Zenmarket who helps you purchase items from Japan from a variety of sources. Have to say that Zenmarket is by far the best J-Pop online store I have ever used. Thought I'd write a review about my experience with the service and explain how Zenmarket works. You can check out Zenmarket for yourself here!

First here are the items I purchased from Zenmarket as I will reference this order in my review. I was absolutely over the moon to find this set and still can't believe how much of a good deal it was! The set I purchased was 12 E-girls singles and 8 Flower singles for 617JPY (about $7.40AUD and fees and shipping not included). That is such a good deal because normally it costs me about $13AUD or $15 per single when I purchase them from my normal online stores. You may notice in the photo that the singles do not have jewel cases. The seller had just removed the jewel cases as some people do for easy storage. I'll explain later what I ended up doing with the singles in regards to the jewel cases.

My Zenmarket order!

What is Zenmarket?
Zenmarket is an online shopping service that allows customers to purchase items from Japanese online stores. Most retailers in Japan do not allow international customers to purchase directly from their stores or use auction/second hand sites (such as Yahoo Auctions). Zenmarket helps international customers solve this problem by allowing them to purchase from a variety of online stores and bid on live auctions through their site. It is available worldwide and uses a variety of shipping methods at affordable prices.

The main reason I used Zenmarket was for J-Pop singles and albums. I was finding it difficult to find items I wanted online at a reasonable price or even at all as some had gone out of print. So after researching a few different shopping services such as Buyee, I settled on using Zenmarket because of their easy to use website, low prices and range of products.

Searching For Items
First you need to decide on what item you would like to buy on Zenmarket. I wasn't really after a particular item at first, I just looked a variety of CD's I was interested in and was amazed at how good the prices were in the Yahoo Auctions section. I nearly fell off my chair at all the items that were available, some I thought weren't even available anymore! I'm going to focus on buying J-Pop CD's in this review as that is what I'm the most experienced with in regards to Zenmarket and other online stores. When searching for items, it's best to think about the particular group or CD you are after. For example, I search for the following terms when looking for items for my collection:

• E-Girls single or E-Girls album. I typed in E-Girls E.G. Crazy for listings of just that one album.
• KARA single
• KARA single set
• Crayon Pop ラリルレ
• Orange Caramel CD
• MOMOLAND Best

I found sometimes if I searched for singles, it would not work if I typed in the word singles. It worked better when I used the word single. The Crayon Pop search example shows that more listings will appear if you use the Japanese title of the song rather than the title RaRiRuRe. I like how you can search by a number of terms such as price, buyout price and time. Sometimes when I'm bored, I like to scroll through all the listings on Zenmarket to see what interesting items people are selling.

Example of the listings for 'E-Girls single'

The descriptions vary on listings as that is up to the seller themselves, but I found out enough information about items I was interested in by what was written in the description. Listings display the current price and buyout price, so you can see what it is currently going for price wise. The time left on the auction and other information such as product and payment details are listed. Zenmarket will inform you on the listing page if you are unable to purchase from particular sellers, so keep an eye out for that. You also add listings and shops to your watchlist which is handy when you are keeping track of multiple items.

Where To Buy J-Pop & K-Pop Albums - Online Store Reviews

I've been buying J-Pop and K-Pop albums online for a few year now so I thought I'd share my experiences with the online stores I've used. These reviews are based on my experience with only a few online stores. There are many other sources you can use to purchase J-Pop and K-Pop albums online that I haven't used and there's lots of reviews on google you can consult for more information. I'll list pros and cons of using each site as well as a brief introduction to the main features and my opinion on using the site.

YesAsia
NOTE: An updated review of YesAsia is available here!
This is the main site most people will start out using as it's one of the big online stores that stocks asian pop music albums. It sells a wide variety of items from movies, video games, book, gifts and anime merchandise. The search engine is easy to use and the site stocks a large selection of J-Pop and K-Pop albums.This is the site I've brought the most of my collection from and have been using it for a number of years. I find it's useful for getting the CD-Only versions of J-Pop singles and ones that are hard to buy outside of Japan. The main problem I find with YesAsia is the albums are more expensive than other sources which is due to raising the cost to cover the free shipping item. But some J-Pop albums are ridiculously over priced from what I've research sometimes. Also years ago, they used to ship orders in a box but a while ago they switched to envelopes. And the weird thing about the shipping is that when I receive it, the sender address shows a random man from China rather than a YesAsia address in Hong Kong (which is where they are based). All my orders have been like this which is strange. I've always been puzzled by this, but I'm guessing it's just a merchant or something they use. 

Pros
+ Large selection of albums and merchandise available. It's a good site to use to find the different versions of each album or if you want a certain cover.
+ Great for J-Pop albums that are hard to find outside of Japan Only stores. I've brought a few Dream Ami singles that I couldn't find on other sites.
+ Free international shipping if you order over $39USD worth of items.
+ Good customer service. I've always received quick replies to my inquiries and they will make necessary changes to your order if needed.
+ Free gashapon if you order two Japanese items that have the gashapon icon.

Cons
- Albums can be expensive as YesAsia marks up the prices to account for the free shipping they offer. I find the K-Pop albums can be over priced compared to other sites and once I convert the price to AUD, some end up being outrageous prices for an album of 4 songs.
- Some items displayed on the website aren't actually in stock and will be cancelled from your order. This is one of the things I hate about online stores. It's the worst when stores list items as available, you order and pay for them only to receive an email later stating the item is not available. They always refund your money and offer the free shipping still if you order goes under $39USD. But I wish online stores would not list items if they're not available. This has happened to me three times with YesAsia. Once with a magazine which I wasn't too fussed about and ended up getting it on Amazon Japan. The other two times was when I ordered the B-version of CocoSori's Japanese single. I pre-ordered the item near when it was coming out and then received an email stating it was not available. I asked them to switch my order to the A-version but then I received an email stating that was not available! So YesAsia never even got the CD in but still listed it as available. It's still listed on the site now but as out of print. Luckily a friend in Japan offered to get the CD for me which was lovely after all that trouble.
- Packaging of the orders isn't as good as it used to be. The albums are sent in an envelope with bubble-wrap. I've had a number of K-Pop albums come with the corners slightly damaged or marks on the cover. This is one of the main reasons I'm thinking of switching to another store for K-Pop, receiving my order is good condition is important to me.

YesAsia Items

Amazon Japan
The Japanese version of Amazon is a fun site to use as they stock unique products you can only get in Japan. I use Amazon Japan to buy all my game books and magazines which are only available in Japan. They have a good range of J-Pop available and it's best to buy albums around the time they are released. I've been using Amazon Japan for a few years and I love it! Even though the shipping costs are expensive, the quality of the shipping service is amazing. Takes about 2 days for my items to arrive and they're always sealed and in a box. The most useful thing to do when using Amazon Japan is to translate the reviews into your language and read what people are saying about the item. The ones on the Crayon Pop album are great especially the ones about the DVD because the reviews are accurate about the terrible filming.

Pros
+ Super fast shipping and great packaging!
+ Sometimes you can find albums or singles for cheap prices. I got my After School Bang and Diva singles for under ¥800 and the limited edition version of Crayon Pop's Japanese album for a cheaper price than YesAsia.
+ Use theMP3 section to listen to samples of songs. This is useful if you cannot find a sample of the song on Spotify or Youtube.

Cons
- Shipping costs can be outrageous once you start adding things into your cart. To ship to where I live, it's ¥900 per shipment and ¥300 per item. So I find sometimes the costs add up once you convert it to your local currency. It's best to compare prices on a few different sites before deciding on where to buy.
- Certain items will not be available as they cannot be shipped to your location or outside of Japan. You could get around this using a proxy service but I've never tried that (one day I'll give it go as there's lots of good albums available second hand). Sometimes you put items in your cart and when you go to pay, it will tell you it will not ship to your country. That's a bit annoying as some items even say they will ship on the listing but it doesn't tell you until the payment part.

Amazon Japan items

KpopMart
I've only used this site once and I wasn't happy with it, so I never used it again. Based in South Korea, they offer a wide selection of K-Pop albums and official merchandise. It's a good site for posters and pre-orders. The only time I've used it was to buy Crayon Pop's album Vol. 1 Evolution Pop. It was listed as a cheaper price than YesAsia and you got a free poster if you pre-ordered. So I ended up pre-ordering the album from there and the poster isn't really free as you have to pay shipping. Now to what turned my off ordering from them again. I had to pay $12 USD in shipping costs (that's way more in AUD) and I didn't even get a tracking number. I feel if you're paying that, there should be a tracking option. So my order got shipping eventually when the album came out and the only way I knew it was coming was by talking to other people who ordered the same album who lived nearby. However when my order came, I noticed how awful the packaging was. I was surprised it made it to me in one piece! It came in a large box which was 50% destroyed and all that was in the box was the poster tube and the album wrapped in some bubble wrap. Amazingly that album wasn't damaged with the awful packaging. Turns out the stock KpopMart had of Crayon Pop's album was also faulty as the CD's were not secured properly and were popping out. Mine had this issue as the tabs the CD's were held on had come off the album. I just glued them back on as they weren't damaged with my album. I did read the KpopMart was offering exchanges on the album so other people had the same issue. I think that's more to do with the album being made for the cheap as it's literally in this cheap cardboard box.

Pros
+ Great for pre-orders and posters!
+ Counts towards the Hanteo chart
+ Useful for older albums as they have a good quantity of albums in stock.