I am Japanese. Like most of Japanese, I am crazy for baseball as well, especial for Hideki Matsui who moved to New York Yankee in 2003. You know, Hideki Matsui is the most famous baseball player in Japan. Therefore, it's so easy to find his stuff in Japan before his moving to New York Yankee that I didn't realize to collect some. It's really sad, I mean, though I can watch his playing by TV living, it's not easy to access his stuff like when he was playing in Japan.

However, I have an Internet access so that I can make a purchase at US online stores and request the vendors to ship the items to me. That must be an available way to collect some of Hideki Matsui's stuff, I thought. Fortunately, I found an online store that allowed me to purchase Yankee sport robes. What's exciting me the most? The store allowed me to select the name and the number of my favorite professional player. It meant I was able to select the name "Hideki Matsui" and his number "55" with the sport robes. No doubt, that's what I should do.

What's the next I should do was to fill with the billing information. As usual, something like first name, last name and address. Blah blah blah... A problem! I could select Japan as the destination country as the options only included United State and Canada. What's the matter? I had to read the shipping information listed on this site, then found it said "If you do not see a specific country or region listed during Checkout that means we do not currently ship to it." Did it mean that the Yankee sport robe was not available for international fans? It seemed so ridiculous.

I noticed that there was a logo of a company called Bongo International listed below the international shipping information of the site with a description as "Click on the logo below for information on international shipping". So I clicked it and was redirected to Bongo International's main page. After I researched this company's service, I was aware of the way to let me own the sports robe, which is called mail forwarding service. Its concept is providing me a US address which allows me to request the vendor to ship the items to. When the items get to the address based on the company's warehouse, the company will consolidate all of them and ship to Japan with much better international shipping cost if you how much the DHL would cost.

This kind of shipping service is absolutely so cool. It's no doubt that I set up an account with the company first, then order the sport robes with US address the company provided to me. After few days, I received the mail package with the items from the US for me. If everyone know how to use it, who cares if the vendors support international shipping?