CDJapan is having a figurine sale with some items (read: the crap) discounted up to 70%. The sale is until 28 Feb. Most of the items are shit not very popular, but there are a few that might be on your wish list, such as:

• HIMM — Mitsuki Sawatari
• Gundam SEED — Cagalli Yula Athha
• Gun X Sword — Carmen 99
• Last Exile — Grand Stream Box
• Last Exile — Alvis E. Hamilton
• Shakugan no Shana — Shana (Black Hair)
• Shakugan no Shana — Shana (Red Hair)
• Bakuretsu Tenshi — Amy
• My-HiME — Natsuki Kuga
• Da Capo II — Nanaka Shirakawa
• Fate/hollow ataraxia — Sakura Mado (Swimsuit)
• Fate/stay night — Collective Memories Trading Figures
• Peace@Pieces — Nagi (Shinigami Costume)
• Melty Blood — Pretty Collection

Take a look at the full list for yourself.

The only thing that really interests me is Mina Majikina but she’s sold out. Oh well.

Deep down in my heart, I knew this was going to happen. It was only a matter of time. But I didn’t expect it to be this soon. 心の準å‚が・・・！

Anyway, COSPA has started taking preorders for a Nanaka dakimakura cover. As you may or may not know, Nanaka is the hawtest girl in Da Capo II, ever.

It costs a cool ï¿¥9,000 excluding tax (in other words, standard COSPA price) and you can preorder one from CDJapan.

It seems like as long as I am connected to the Internet, I’ll never be able to save a single cent. Grrr. (*pokes moyism*)

It’s a 1/6 polystone pre-painted figurine of Rei measuring 20cm tall and it costs 13,800 excluding tax. Order from HLJ or CDJapan. (CDJapan’s listing has the scale wrong)

My perfect strategy for saving up on CD/DVD shipping has been flushed down the infinite void of a JR train station toilet by the insidious conspiracy known as Neowing (better known as CDJapan).

CDJapan has a very flexible pre-ordering system. As long as it’s not a collectible made for pre-order and the item has not yet been released, you are allowed to cancel your orders any time. You can also move, combine and split open orders that have not shipped. And although they charge your credit card the moment you place your order, the charge doesn’t go through and eventually drops if the order is still far from its release date. (They charge it again before shipping.)

The cost of shipping a single CD through EMS is, to say the least, nuts. Not peanuts, just crazy. It takes more than 1000 yen to ship a single that costs about 1000 yen itself. The shipping cost doesn’t scale linearly with the number of items, so generally the more items you group in a single order, the cheaper your shipping is, cheap being a relative term of course.

Unless you are buying statues made of lead or huge quantities of rocks, in which case you are weird.

Don’t ask me how this is related to the topic

Add customizable pre-orders and cheaper shipping in bulk together and it doesn’t take a greedy little bastard to figure out the ultimate secret (or what used to be anyway) of (pre-)ordering stuff from Neowing: keep adding new unreleased items to the order so as to delay its shipping and accumulate more items! You could always cancel the pre-orders later if you didn’t want them any more, as long as it was still before the release date. How deliciously convenient.

That was how I ended up with orders worth 30,000 yen. I added the items bit by bit over a period of more than six months. The shipping ended up being a lot cheaper (again, it’s all relative…) and all was good with the world.

And the good days looked like they were going to last forever (or at least until Haruhi gives up on our world)… until Neowing ran out of storage space for all the items they had to hold on hand due to pending orders. I guess I wasn’t the only one doing this…

Now, any orders older than 2 months will be automatically forced to ship. Unreleased items belonging in the same order also must not have release dates that are more than 2 months apart. Due to these policy changes, my future orders will have to be shipped separately. I think I’m going to have to downgrade to Registered Air Mail from now on…

Yet another brilliant plan foiled by the powers that be.

I’m waiting for my JLPT 2 results. Judging by last year’s experience, it should arrive by mail within this week, probably on Thursday or Friday. I really need my certification so that I can qualify for the JLPT 1 prep course. I haven’t been doing much in terms of studying Japanese for the last three months and I really, really wish to pass JLPT 1 this year…

I’ve been looping disillusion and wasurekaketeita no kana from the Fate/stay night anime for the last 24 hours. Can’t wait till my CDJapan order arrives. ^^ Crystal Energy from Mai-Otome is nice too.

More blogging after I get my JLPT results. I promise. No, really.

P.S. Watch REC.