I joined their fan club right after their hiatus announcement in the hope to secure their concert ticket for the last time. Alas, the pandemic happened, which is actually a good thing in a way they provide online concert viewing so everyone can watch. Even after their hiatus, Arashi still gives a lot of benefits to their fan club members. If you live outside Japan and need help joining a fan club, here we recommend three services that we already tested.

1. Onegai Kaeru

This is the first proxy service that I use until now. Their annual agent fee is quite high (USD100 – 150) and that only covers basic services such as lending an address, helping to sign up for a fan club, and receiving fan club mail. On their website, they stated offering additional services like translating fan club newsletters and balloting for tickets. Well, I asked and they said they don’t do such things. So if you want to ballot for ticket, you have to do it by yourself. If you want to forward your fan club mail, you have to pay USD20 plus the shipping fee. The reason why I still use their service is because of their good customer service and they are very accommodating.

2. SOS Japan

Actually, their service is on par with Onegai Kaeru despite how fishy their website looks. I used their service for Ikuta Toma’s fan club. Just like Onegai Kaeru, they handled all fan club member registration. FYI, for Ikuta Toma, JE doesn’t send fan club mail so it is free to become a fan club member. The annual agent fee for SOS japan is slightly cheaper (8000 yen). Their customer service was also good, they help to claim a refund for Toma’s stage play ticket when the show got canceled due to the pandemic at no cost. They also help me to buy Kanjani8’s 15sai concert ticket from ticket.co.jp. The reason why I stop using their service is that I see no reason to pay for the agent fee when I don’t receive any fan club mail.

3. Blackship

This service is quite new. They are basically a package forwarding service like Tenso. I don’t use Tenso because they can’t forward mail to Indonesia (which is weird because Buyee can do it). They don’t charge annual fee. Their service is only to provide a Japanese address so you can receive package/mail and then forward the mail to you. So when JE finally accept an overseas credit card, I use the address their provided to join Ikuta Toma fan club again. It is definitely a cheaper option than using agents like Onegai Kaeru and SOS Japan.

So that are three options that you can choose from if you decided to join JE’s group fan club.