One of the sites that expats in Japan will likely use is iHerb, in order to get various products from abroad that aren’t too commonly stocked here (in my case, stick deodorant). However, their order experience is simply awful.

For anyone searching, if you are paying with Pay-Easy (ペイジー), this needs 3 pieces of information labeled in Japanese, and iHerb “helpfully” hands you two numbers in English. This is how to reconcile them:

• 収納機関番号

  will be emailed to you as the “Collection institution number”.

• お客様番号

  is your own phone number that you entered during checkout. (They helpfully forget to tell you this.)

• 請求番号

  is emailed to you as “Recipient number”.

iHerb seems to have problems with my Japanese debit card, so Pay-Easy was the next-best choice, except for the snafu above. It seems somewhat common that sites using or assuming English provide non-helpful translations of things that should just stay in Japanese…