Thanks so much 
I’m so glad you enjoyed it!!!
Great idea to buy two books at once, I wish I would have thought of that! If there aren’t objections we could basically already decide to read the 2nd place Pacific Ocean book next, and then if anyone makes another order in the meantime they could already order it.
I finally made the thread for the next book!
Click the polls to join and let us know when you expect your copy to arrive:
I’ve done that too and I’ve received the 2 today, so I’m ready for the 2 next adventures ! 
Thank you for opening the new thread^^
I got all 5 books! Ready to start the adventure!
Wahoo! I think there are just a couple people left to get their books and then I’ll see you there 
Hey everyone, I was just thinking that it’s likely we’re about 6 weeks out from escaping the Cold and Snowy Mountains 
(not a guarantee ). [Later edit: 5 months later, we survived!]
These are independent “choose your own adventure” format books, so you can join for just one or any book, and you don’t have to have read the first book. See the home post for how this club works.
Next book What do you think about joining, the next Survival Game book taking place in the 太平洋 Pacific ocean 
? Here are some various options you can click on (3 votes since it’s a sneaky 3 in one poll that I might regret)
Purchasing and availability: Amazon periodically sells out but currently has 9 copies. I found a popular proxy service for buying used books from Japan that has plenty of copies, here’s a post with details on my experience with the proxy service.**
Timing: vote here.
Mysterious!!
Also, we should probably test if we can actually acquire the book before we decide on the next club. I know some people bought all of them, but I only got the mountain one.
Yes - thanks for bringing this up as that is exactly why I made the note on the other two books. I’ve been buying them as I go and almost couldn’t get the current mountain one.
The books have been getting increasingly harder to find after the first club started (is it possible exposure on WK and Natively really got them to sell out?). Regarding the ocean book - since it came in a close second in the last poll and I know several people bought it at that time (oops, wish I had now!), I decided at that time it would be pragmatic to choose that for book 3 at the time. I hope I read the room right on that!
I don’t have the Ocean one either, so I’ll have to get it, too.
How does it feel to be an influencer? 
I’d be happy to do the ocean one next, and I’m a little less interested in the desert and savannah ones. Maybe we could do ocean and then try your secret idea?
The only book I don’t have is desert, so I can’t do that one. If they’re selling out as we read them that’ll make it even harder to find. I’d be okay with doing all the books as we go through them, or taking a break to do something else. Is the new secret idea also cyoa or is it something else?
Okay, I’ve been searching a bit and it’s actually pretty easy to find the survival books in stock on japanese websites and order them with a proxy service. Just a bit less beginner friendly.
I’m pretty sure there are at least 2 other people who haven’t voted yet who already have the Ocean one that will probably join, so it’s fairly certain we’ll do that. I hope getting a used book doesn’t put anyone off.
yeah I found 12 on one, am I being too paranoid not to post the link? I was just worried if I did they might disappear before we confirm the club!
I’m thinking of a reveal after we read Ocean 
not to distract us from our current survival challenges.
I may have just ordered a copy 
Along with more children’s books while I was at it 
seeing as both of you are going for it, plus we know prath, Marifly and macalys all already have it from the last order, I think that just leaves me and Otoko who don’t have the book.
Continue to vote and register your interest so I can tag you at the end of the current book to talk timing. If you’re new, set this thread to watching.
Oh I don’t have this book either! I backed out at the last minute and only got the Snowy Mountains one haha.
What’s the proxy service you’re talking about? 
Maybe I can check if it’s available for my country!
Oh that’s ok, don’t feel obliged to get it! The proxy service is called Neokyo and then you can choose a market from there. The Mercari market has about a dozen used copies at the moment. Here’s the link with my search parameters, although I’m not sure if that works in other countries. Basically I selected Mercari and then searched for a fragment of the title, 太平洋を泳ぎぬけ. There are some promotions running at the moment, so that’s nice.
I have never used one of these, so anyone else trying this the first time be sure to read their user guide. The costs are as follows: book + domestic shipping (within Japan to Neokyo) + various Neokyo fees to package things + international shipping (Neokyo to you). Then depending on country there may be some import taxes/fees so search what monetary limits there are on imports and be aware in most countries the shipping cost is included in the assessment (not just the value of the item).
Also, there are other proxy services, if anyone has experience with different ones, then let us know!
Overall summary: I ordered 4 books: 3 paperback and 1 hardcover. At the step where I could estimate shipping myself, actually, by estimating the size of 4 Japanese books and 300 g/book, I came very close to the actual shipping dimensions and cost. The final shipping dimensions after packing were 16x10x23 cm and 1126 g. My total cost to buy the used books and ship, and all fees, came to €8 per book, which is what I was expecting from the beginning. Adding the import cost made it €10 per book.
The most important thing I learned about the Neokyo process is that you can buy a bunch of books/stuff separately and they will store stuff up to 45 days which is really convenient. Then, important information: once you request an order to be packed, you switch to a different time period. Once the order is packed, you have 7 days to pay for it to be shipped. I mean, there is no reason you would want to wait longer at this point, but it’s worth knowing that even if an item has “storage” days left on it, post packing you roll into a much shorter time scale to take your next step.
My steps were:
1: Buy the books (within Japan). Once all have arrived at Neokyo, then: 2: Make a packing request. 3: Make a shipping request.
6 Sept - Buy the books (within Japan)
I just started my order with Neokyo, I realised it’s a totally different way of thinking about ordering books because they will store the books that arrive up to 45 days before shipping.
This is pretty nice, so I could order the Survival Escape book now, but I can wait until the IBC vote ends next week to decide if I’ll add anything to my package that gets shipped internationally. And I can wait a bit longer until I definitely won’t have work travel to tell them to start packing things to send to Germany. This is quite convenient.
As far as I understand the estimates, since each book from Mercari costs me about ~400 yen, then by the time I add fees and international shipping, I figured out the following for Germany:
If I order:
So the sweet spot to make an order worth it seems to be about 3 books plus. Fingers crossed the shipping doesn’t turn out to be massively more expensive than expected I’ll update this when it’s confirmed.
23 Sept 2024 - Make a packing request
First I had ordered 3 books, then I added a 4th for the IBC. Now all books are there (well, they’ve been there a while actually…). I’ve spent about $12 up to this point.
I just made my packing request. To be honest, I am not sure what the various options mean, so I just left them at the default options. What was confusing at first is that this is just the packing request, the shipping comes in the next step. Also, there was no charge - perhaps the packing charge happens with the shipping charge.
Also, important information for the packing and shipping steps:
25 September - make shipping request
They didn’t need as much time for packing as expected. This step was super easy. It showed me the package size and weight and which shipping options are available including whether the package would be insured. I picked the cheapest option - Japan Post’s Airmail small package.
The shipping cost ended up being 3450 yen including their handling/packaging. My total cost per book is about 8 euros. So far all good, now just waiting for it to arrive!
4 October- books arrived
OK first off I’m very happy with this!
The big question in my mind was, would they strip the domestic packaging before shipping internationally and the answer is yes. Each book was placed in a plastic sleeve and sealed. Then the four books were bubble wrapped together and placed in a compact box. Perfect!
The quality of each was fine (this depends on the local seller on Mercari, there were photos and the books look like what I expected) and one book even looks brand new.
The customs charge and duty was 7.80 euros altogether ( Germany), so 20% on the value plus shipping, and a small 1 euro fee. That makes the total cost about 10 euros per book.
So is this proxy service worth it? Well, if a book is out of print and I can only get used, this is what I’ll do. Cost wise though, I will still check Verasia first and if the book is 10 euro or less, I’ll just get it there.
beautiful stack!
There are several proxy services you can use. I don’t have too much experience using them because usually I can find what I want on cdjapan or whatever, but I’m using japanrabbit for this order. Their site says they ship to 140 countries so you should be able to use it!
With their site, you find the product on the japanese internet, and link to the page. Then they purchase it for you and send it to a warehouse. Then they send it to you from the warehouse. Here’s where I found the book listed as in stock. You can also use these services to buy from secondhand markets like Japanese mercari.
These services are more expensive than using something like CDJapan, though. Japanrabbit charges a service fee, which is why I ordered multiple books, so I wasn’t just paying such a large service fee for one item.
Then, they only charge the shipping after it’s arrived in the warehouse and you ask them to ship it to you. So you’ll get charged twice- once to buy the items and ship them to the warehouse, and once to ship them to your country. They have some kind of shipping estimator on their website, so you could probably take the dimensions of a Japanese paperback and estimate it to see how much shipping will be, but they don’t actually calculate the shipping and charge you until the warehouse part. I wouldn’t buy something with these if I was short on cash, since the fees are kind of high and you don’t actually know what the shipping charge will be until they’ve already bought the item and sent it to the warehouse.
My copy for the ocean adventure arrived! I just wanted to give an update that my experience using Neokyo was overall positive.
I’m going to keep it in the plastic wrap till we start, though to keep that new feeling going.
Here is the post where I kept notes and documented using Neokyo.
was playing catchup with some other books been super behind on, got caught up on the current ones and finally picking up this book
Going to follow the decision trees from the club read earlier this year. I’m working on something in renshuu for this (kind of a little experiment) but if it works out I’ll post that info here. It’s not all fancy automated build like chris can do but it’s at least an interesting experiment even if it’s manual for now.
Getting through the first few pages to finally be able to start to read scene 4 
(took way too long)
Everything will try to kill me 
