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I'm looking to purchase a ticket for a concert in Japan. The ticket is vended by Pia. For this particular concert, two payment options are offered: Seven-Eleven and Econtext. Both of these appear to require you to physically go to a kiosk in a konbini in Japan and pay for the ticket there. (Well, for Econtext, it says 「コンビニ・Pay-easy対応ATM、ネットバンキング、楽天Edyより各種お支払い方法をご選択いただけます」, but I imagine that transacting via Edy still requires you to be at a physical konbini.)

Since I am not located in Japan, this is something of a problem. I will, obviously, be in Japan around when the concert occurs, so I will have no problem picking up the ticket from a konbini when the time comes, but the payment deadline for the ticket is well before I will be in Japan (I'm preordering).

Is there any way I can pay for my ticket while being physically located outside Japan (specifically, in the US)? I know the language well enough to negotiate Japanese websites and communicate with Japanese people, if necessary.

senshin
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    Payment by an NFC card Edy (http://econtext.jp/support/pia/pay_edy/card_pop.html) does not require you to show at the convenience store, but requires you to have an Edy prepaid card (or a smartphone app) and a card reader or possibly a Japanese PC with an internal one. If out of those payment methods http://t.pia.jp/guide/payment.jsp a credit card payment is unavailable for your concert, I guess there is no way you can do it outside of Japan. – macraf Oct 03 '15 at 22:23
  • @macraf Thanks for the suggestion! I put in an order for an Edy card and an Edy reader, and I'll try them out when they get here. (Unfortunately, this concert doesn't allow credit card as a method of payment.) – senshin Oct 03 '15 at 22:39
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    But there is a risk. Edy is generally a prepaid card, so you must somehow charge it. The usual way to do it is ...going to kombini convenience store. You can charge it with a credit card as explained here http://edy.rakuten.co.jp/howto/card/charge/credit/ , but only American Express seems to be supported (no VISA or MasterCard). Please check it before you order. – macraf Oct 03 '15 at 22:49
  • It lists "Net Banking" as an option, but I don't know how it would handle an international transfer if you don't have a Japanese bank account. In-country, there is a memo field where the order number, customer name, etc is entered. – Kent Oct 04 '15 at 00:10
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    Are you staying at a hotel? One with a concierge? Or do you have a credit card that includes concierge service? This seems like just the sort of thing they would take care of for you... – Kate Gregory Oct 25 '15 at 15:19
  • Do you have any friends in Japan? Just wire them the ticket price and ask them to buy the tickets for you. – Elliot A. Dec 29 '15 at 22:14
  • @ElliotA. That would, of course, be the simplest solution, and is basically what I ended up doing - finding a friendly Japanese person who also wanted to attend the same concert and would buy an additional ticket for the ticket price plus a small fee. But this is not really a generalizable solution (I don't know how I would go about locating friendly Japanese people in general), so I don't think it counts as an answer. – senshin Dec 29 '15 at 23:16
  • Note to @macraf - I was able to follow the Edy payment process until I got to the point when I needed to charge it with an AmEx. Alas, the website required me to enter the name on my card in kana, and of course, my name is not spelled in kana. The website wouldn't let me submit the form with my name written in Latin script (the way it is on the card), and if I entered a kana approximation to my name, something on the backend returned a validation error (presumably since the name on my card isn't in kana). So I gave up on Edy at that point. Oh well. – senshin Dec 29 '15 at 23:18
  • @pops maybe you have an idea? – Mark Mayo Feb 06 '16 at 12:52
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    The lack of an answer to this question is probably because it would be tedious to hunt down references backing an answer of "you can't do that" for all the avalable methods, but it's very probably the correct answer. – fkraiem Feb 08 '16 at 18:06

1 Answers1

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Use a Japanese concierge service like this one:

Do you need to buy goods from a Pokemon, Disney or other specialist store in Tokyo?

GoodsFromJapan can organize various Japan Concierge services whatever your needs while in Japan or outside the country.

http://www.goodsfromjapan.com/japan-concierge-services-a-133.html

That was the top result on googling 'Japan concierge service' - there seem to be plenty of others available too, although this is the only one I've seen so far that specifically mentions being willing to visit shops on your behalf.

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