I'm agree. I know many cases of people that goes 
to live at Japan, and the japaneses see them like 
strangers or marcians... Even If you are a 
japanese that went to live abroad for a couple of 
years, when you return to your ountry, you are 
not a japanese anymore. I think they are 
very 'special' people...
I recently began to use Yahoo!Japan, and I have 
to confess that I don't know any of japanese, my 
strategy is: sign up, find any product you are 
interested in, go to Q&A and write: "I have a 
question to ask you, can you email me?" and I 
leave my mail too. So, If the seller knows 
english, he will reply. I have made two deals in 
that way, one of the sellers was very polite, he 
send me two mails, one written with his own words 
in english ( a bit primitive, like my english^^, 
I speak spanish..) and then he send me another 
using a translating software! Personally, I 
understand the first one best ^_^

BUT if you don't contact the seller first, you 
don't know what to expect: Another japanese 
person emailed me that I had won an auction. As I 
hadn't told with him about shipping 
internacionally, blablabla, he tolds me that he 
doesn't understand so much japanese, that he want 
payment made in Yen, there weren't other 
way...and he treated me bad after I told he that 
I can only pay with Us dollars.

Well, here you got some points. Sorry if my 
english is not very good ^_^U

Celery