News

October Special Discount
20% OFF on all embroidery, engraving & alteration services! (Until October 28th, 2pm JPT).

20% OFF on all embroidery, engraving & alteration services

Summer is now behind us, autumn is setting in, Japan should celebrate the arrival of the colorful autumn in the following weeks, recovering the country with beautiful red leaves.
The COVID-19 situation in Japan is getting better, and despite recent peaks, the numbers are now dropping, vaccines are now more and more available for the youngest sections of society, and more than half of the population is now fully vaccinated. Things start to get better here, and we do hope it is the same for you. In the meantime, stay safe, take care of yourself and your loved ones.

After our discounts on our new season essentials selection, we decided to offer you the possibility to purchase your very own customized equipment with a 20% OFF discount on all embroidery, engraving & alteration services.
Thanks to all our customizations modules, all jackets, pants, belts, (and even bags) can be embroidered with many options available! Clothes can be perfectly adjusted to your liking and you can also engrave your weapons to make them truly one of a kind.
This is the perfect occasion to personalize your equipment and tailor it to your desires.

Please note that this discount will end on October 28th, 2pm JPT, be sure to don't miss it!

Take care of yourself and enjoy the discount! See you very soon on KuSakuraShop!
September Special Discount
10% OFF on our new season essentials selection! (Until September 30th, 2pm JPT).
10% OFF on our new season essentials selection!

Summer is slowly ending but temperatures are still very high here in Japan.
The COVID-19 situation in Japan is still complicated with an extended state of emergency to several more prefectures, and overwhelmed vaccination centers where it's still difficult to schedule an appointment.
We're still far from a "back to normal" situation here, we can only hope for a brighter future, but be assured that we are by your side in these tough times.

The "Big event" is now finished, it was a delight to watch all the wonderful competitions, and we are also thrilled by the athletes' performances during the Handysport "Big Event", which will already be over soon!
After our two months-long special discounts, we're coming back to our ordinary pace and we wanted to offer you 10% OFF on our new season essentials selection! With this selection, both beginners and competitors will find what they are looking for, be it a brand new Judogi, a new bag to carry your equipment safely, a new belt, a wooden weapon to work on your Kata, or many other things, check them out!

Please note that this discount will end on September, 30th, 2 pm JPT, be sure to don't miss it!

New products on KuSakuraShop

Keen eyes may have noticed the apparition of a lot of new products on the site in the past weeks, and they are totally right!
- We are now offering a full range of Nippon Kenpo products: Jacket, Pants, Gloves, Breastplates, Helmet, you'll find the full equipment you need to practice this wonderful martial art.
- In our Kyudo section, we added the Rubber Yumi (bow) that will become your perfect companion for home training. It is not used as a strength training tool but as a learning tool to improve the shooting pattern. Usually, people tend to think that the rubber Yumi is used only by beginners, but advanced users also use it to check the accuracy of the Eight Stages of Shooting. Check it out on the website!
Take care of yourself, of your loved ones, and enjoy the discount! See you very soon on KuSakuraShop!
Order Delivery to the Olympic Village
KuSakuraShop is entirely committed to provide the best of the best of Judo equipment to all practitioners in the world, and this includes athletes coming to Japan for the 2021 Olympics. However, a specific procedure for delivery to the Olympic village being necessary, please read this news carefully.

Order Delivery to the Olympic Village

It is possible to place an order on KuSakuraShop and be delivered to the Olympic village, however, this requires a specific procedure due to specific covid prevention measures (which puts the Olympic village under lockdown).

In order to receive a package within the restricted area of the village, you must fill in a MTA form and submit it to the MTA desk at the village at least 24h before the package arrives.
To avoid any mistakes or packages sent back to KuSakura, we need you to send us a copy of your MTA form within 48h after your order has been placed. If we receive an order with a delivery address at the Olympic Village, we will send you the specific form to fill in within 1 business day after your order confirmation.

You can also download instructions here (PDF format): Tokyo_2020_-_LOG_Desk_at_NOC_Services_Centre_6_July2021_003
And the MTA form here (excel format): Tokyo_2020_-_MTA_request_form_6_July_2021

KuSakuraShop is entirely committed to providing the best of the best Judo equipment to all practitioners in the world, and this includes athletes coming to Japan for the 2021 Olympics.
For this reason, we have reorganized production so we will be able to deliver any order within 8 days (from the first business day after your order was placed), with the following exceptions:
- The Dojin Master Judogi cannot be produced in 1 week.
- Belts with integrated embroideries cannot be produced in 1 week.
- Logos and special design embroideries orders are suspended until the end of August (to allow us to manufacture and deliver faster during the event).
All other types of embroideries are available as well! So you can order a custom size IJF Judogi with name embroidery, and we will deliver 8 days after your order!

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions, we'll get back to you within 1 business day.
"The Competition" Sales
"The Competition" Sales / 10% OFF on IJF products & accessories! (Until August 31th, 2pm JPT).

"The Competition" Sales - 10% OFF on IJF products & accessories

Summer is finally here, we hope that the incoming sunny days will warm you up! Dojos are starting to reopen all over the world and practice starts to go back to normal.
After several months of wait and uncertainties, we are now less than a month away from the beginning of the big event!
Yes, "the big event", because as you probably know, they are extremely touchy about their copyrights and clearly state they will sue any form of infringement, so we've decided to call it "The competition" and "The big event", so it is clear KuSakuraShop has no connection whatsoever with this event, but is still very excited about it, as we all are.

The Judo Competition will be held at the legendary Tokyo Budokan, the mythical martial arts hall originally built for the 1964 "Big Event". It was also the place where the best Judoka crossed paths during the Judo World Championships in 2019. It has been renovated in between and should now offer better than ever conditions to all competitors.
From July 24th to July 31st, more than 380 athletes will compete in 15 different events! The Handysport "Big Event" will be held from August 27th to August 29th.
During this intense week of competition, we will be lucky to see some of the best Judoka wearing our IJF Judogi. Don't miss this opportunity to support your country's athletes.

To celebrate this event, we will run a 10% OFF discount on IJF products & accessories!
This exclusive discount will last two months and will end on August, 31st, 2 pm JPT, don't miss it!

New version of KuSakuraShop

After several weeks of work, we are very happy to announce that we just released the Japanese Version of KuSakuraShop! If you're reading this and are a Japanese speaker, you can now click on the Japanese flag on the top left of the website to access the Japanese version. For now, only the Judo equipment section is available but we will add more categories in the following months!
Don't hesitate to contact us at info@kusakurashop.com if you have any remarks or suggestions!
Training at home Special Discount
10% OFF on our "Training at home" selection! (Until June 30th, 2pm JPT)

Training at home Special Discount!

Summer is slowly coming, the weather is getting clearer, and sunny days are warming our minds. As you probably know, the situation all around the world is not evolving as positively in the way we hoped for and it's still difficult to gather to train together. Nevertheless, it's still important to practice regularly, in order to keep good mental and physical health. That's why we decided to create a special selection of products to help you during your home training for all martial arts!

Our team selected a list of Headgears, Dogi, Hakama, T-shirts, protective gear, weapons, and many more products that will hopefully accompany you through these tough times, until a better tomorrow.

This exclusive discount will exceptionally last two months and will end on June, 30th, 2 pm JPT, so be sure to don't miss it!

Golden Week Holidays

We will be closed on April 29 (thu), May 3rd (Mon), 4th (Tue) and 5th (Wed). Inquiries will be answered at a slower pace without interruption

In Japan, April 29th (Showa Day), May 3rd (Constitution Memorial), May 4th (Greenery day) and May 5th (Children's day) are national holidays forming a series called "the Golden Week holidays"
All suppliers, carriers and partners will be closed during the complete holidays, from April 29th to May 4th
In order to limit the of orders piling up, we will be working on April 30th, although we will only be able to ship a minimum number of orders.
Normal operation will resume on Thursday 6th.
Please also note that orders containing products which are order-made or out of stock might suffer a delay of about 2 weeks if their production/preparation time includes the Golden Week. This delay is taken into account by our system and the date indicated at checkout stays accurate.

As usual, our team is taking work home and will continue to answers emails at a slower pace and our website will stay fully operational.

Take care of yourself, of your loved ones, and enjoy this incredible discount! See you very soon on KuSakuraShop!
Beginning of the School Year Special Discount
10% OFF on everything! (Until April 28th, 2pm JPT)

10% OFF on everything!

We reached the beginning of April, a very special month here in Japan as it symbolizes the beginning of the school year which corresponds to the Sakura period. Cherry trees are blooming all around the country, covering the trees with beautiful white coats for only a few days. Usually, Japanese people gather themselves and have a nice picnic in parks to enjoy this unique scenery, but as you have guessed, due to the actual pandemic, people will only contemplate the view from afar.

To celebrate this symbolic milestone, we decided to make a special discount: 10% OFF on everything on the website. With this discount, you are sure to find what you need, be it a new Judogi, a Kodokan Black Belt, a brand new Shinai, a bag for conveying equipment, or any accessories!

This exclusive discount ends on April 28th, 2pm JPT, so be sure to don't miss it!

IMPORTANT: GOLDEN WEEK HOLIDAYS INFORMATION

In Japan, the first week of May is called the "Golden Week" for its series of national holidays.
This year, April 29th (Thu), May 3rd (Mon), May 4th (Tue), and May 5th (Wed), which respectively represent Showa Day, Constitution Day, Greenery Day and Children's day will be off.
Our workshop will close for an entire week, so any order for made-to-order items for which the production time includes the Golden Week will be delayed by about one week (taken into account on the production time displayed on our website).
KuSakuraShop will not take more vacation than necessary and will only be closed these days.

Note that if orders won't be processed, we'll keep answering your emails from home (at a slower pace), as usual!

Take care of yourself, of your loved ones, and enjoy this incredible discount! See you very soon on KuSakuraShop!
March Special Offer
15% OFF on a Selection of Accessories (until March 31st, 5 pm JPT)
15% OFF on a Selection of Accessories

Winter is almost over, the colors of the japanese spring are slowly blooming, great days are coming back. The only stain in the painting is that the situation due to COVID is still not at its best point, but we can perceive a small improvement, although it is not enough to get our activity back on track.

In the upcoming months, a lot of things are going to change as you will see in the report below. In march, we’ve decided to offer 15% on a Selection of Accessories until March 31st. If you were waiting hard to get a Sauna Suit or another accessory to be more comfortable during your training, it is now the best time to jump on the occasion!

February report

We took benefit of the situation brought by COVID 19 to advance on some of our projects. One of those big projects being the merge of both KuSakuraShop website, international and France.

Along with this merge, we will bring a lot of improvements to the customer experience in the objective to always make your shopping experience easier and more enjoyable. These improvements are the subject of a pretty big news we recently published, you can check it out here.

Highlights of the improvements:
- The merge of our two shops KuSakura International & France
- Shipping fees are no longer free for all orders
- We’re removing the minimum order amount
- New shipping fee calculator and Custom Invoice Declaration Selector
- Customers can now choose the currency they would like to pay in
- Customers can now order from Japan
All the improvements and changes mentioned above will take place from March 9th.

We highly recommend that you have a look in detail at all the customer experience improvements we have made so that you can now be aware of how your order will be handled and so on.

Take care of yourself and your surroundings.

See you soon, on KuSakuraShop.
Merge KuSakura International x France
KuSakuraShop France and International are merging & important upgrade of the KuSakuraShop experience!

Merge KuSakura International x France & Customer Experience Improvement

As we were teasing it for 2 months now, it is now time to reveal the big project we were talking about in our newsletters. This is going to be quite a long news. This is why we separated it in different main parts, so that you can have an overview of this very important update of the shop.

※The merge of our two shops KuSakura International & France※

The biggest change to announce is the merge of our two websites, KuSakuraShop International and KuSakuraShop France. Indeed, the latter will be shut down on Tuesday, March 9th, and merged with the international version of the shop on which you are reading this news.

With this merge and in order to make our customer’s life easier, our new localization system will automatically select the region you are accessing the website from. It will also be possible to access the french version of the website by clicking on the small flag on the top-left corner of the main menu.

※Shipping fees are no longer free for all orders※

Several changes have been made on different parts of our website and of our activity. Therefore, we are no longer able to guarantee our “Free Shipping” policy except for orders superior to $250 USD.

Nevertheless, the abandonment of this policy is going to be followed with a significant drop in the prices of our products and most of our customers will now have the possibility to choose their favorite carrier as explained below.

※We’re removing the minimum order amount ※

The minimum amount of orders on KuSakuraShop was previously set to 40 USD. Given the diverse changes explained above, we took the decision to allow our customers to check out with orders which total amount are less than 40 USD, and let them decide which transporter would better fit their needs as it has been asked by some of our customers, more comfortable with one specific carrier than another one.

※New shipping fee calculator and Custom Invoice Declaration Selector※

As we were explaining it above, if customers are more comfortable with DHL than FedEx for instance, it is no longer needed to contact us so that we make sure we pick the carrier you wish. Customers will be able to directly choose the carrier they wish directly from the cart. This change goes along with the new shipping fee calculator we implemented that will automatically calculate the shipping costs for your order according to the carrier you have selected.

The design of the cart has been reworked for ergonomic and pragmatic purposes. We implemented a Custom Invoice Declaration selector through which you will be able to indicate to us the amount you would like to be declared for your order for the customs. The way to use is pretty straightforward, it is just a simple cursor that you can slide over from 10% of the order amount, considered as really risky to 100% of the order amount, considered as the safest declaration option, but also the priciest in customs taxes.

Disclaimer: Please note that we do not endorse under-declared custom invoices but we understand the difficulties our customers may run into when dealing with international imports. Furthermore, as we are concerned in giving maximum freedom to our customers, we offer it on our website.

※Customers can now choose the currency they would like to pay in※

We are offering a tool on the top-right corner of your screen that allows you to switch the currency so that you can check the prices of the product in a currency you are used to. However, this currency switch was only for indication purposes and the final order was billed in US Dollars (Euro on KuSakuraShop.fr).

When the new version of the website will be launched, customers will be able to pay in the currency they duly choose through the aforementioned tool. This will avoid some issues some of our customers had with their banks charging them a significant additional conversion fee of money or denying their payments by cards because of the difference of currency.

We set a 1% currency exchange rate, which, thanks to our selling volume, should be cheaper than regular bank exchange fees

※Customers can now order from Japan※

Our fellow living in Japan will also be able to get their order delivered in Japan, at a precise date if needed. This was not possible on the previous version of the website and was forcing us to tell our customers living in Japan, to contact us so that we could place their order on our domestic system.

This process was actually quite bothersome, unintuitive and mistakes were more likely to happen given the time needed to handle such orders.

Now just as any other destination available on KuSakuraShop, customers are able to order directly from the website.

※To sum up※

All in all, this new version of KuSakuraShop is also a renewal of the customer experience we would like to offer. We’ve thought everything to be easier to use, understand and more intuitive while keeping your favorite products and the core mission statement of our brand intact. Some of these changes are here to avoid some headache for our customers and some issues that can be encountered when dealing with international import.

We hope that you will be satisfied with this enhanced customer experience the KuSakuraShop team is offering you through all these changes. Next up will be our discount for March. If you are interested in one of the products currently discounted, you only have a few days left!

Stay safe and take care of your surroundings!

See you soon on KuSakuraShop
February Special Discount
15% OFF on All Time Best Sellers (until March 1st, 12 pm JPT)

15% OFF on All Time Best Sellers

During winter, we have the chance to get a clear blue sky in Japan. January is already over and we are attacking the second month of 2021.

The situation in Japan is actually not getting any better. Most of our staff in Tokyo and our craftsmen in our workshop in Osaka are still on partial unemployment schemes due to the difficulties caused by the new Coronavirus. Furthermore, the japanese government is currently considering an extension of the State of Emergency initially declared on January 8th, making the situation here increasingly more complicated for everyone.

In any case, a new month means a new discount on KuSakuraShop and this month our staff decided to offer you 15% OFF on All Time Best Sellers! Competitors or just casual practitioners, you definitely want to have a look at our selection this month, to see if there is something you may be interested in.

Please note that this discount will be live until March 1st.

All in all, we are trying to do the best we can to advance on our different projects while following the policies implemented by the government against the Covid 19. It is quite hard but as usual, we are still motivated to provide our customers with the best made in Japan equipment.

Enjoy our discount and see you very soon on KuSakuraShop!
State of emergency declared for Tokyo area
Change of working hour to 10am ~ 4.30pm. Suspension of all customer visits to our office. At least until February 7th. No changes in our shipping capacities, we deliver as usual!

State of emergency declared for Tokyo area

January 7th (Thu), the prime minister of Japan has declared a second state of emergency for the Tokyo area. The measures cover Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa, 4 prefectures that account for almost half of Japan's population, and for half of the covid contamination in Japan.

As you know, if you read our articles in March 2020, the state of emergency in Japan is merely a matter of recommendations, as there is no legal disposition that would allow the Japanese government to force its citizens to follow them. The recommendations are, for now, as follows (additional measures are expected in the next weeks):

- Restaurants, bars and other recreative facilities must close between 7 and 8 pm.
- Office work must go remote by 70% wherever possible.
- Limitations in public events attendance.
- The general population is requested to stay home as much as possible.

This second state of emergency is quite different from the first. The country is now well prepared, masks and disinfection equipment are widely available, and many companies have put in place the necessary measures to facilitate remote work.

At Seido, we are taking the following measures:
- We are now entirely closed to visits (we were accepting visitors on a one per one basis).
- Our opening hours are temporarily set to 10am~4.30pm.
- Shifts have been reduced to allow our staff to avoid crowded public transportation (although trains to our location are most of the time half-empty, and expected to even further empty during the state of emergency).

Remote work is not a simple measure to put in place at Seido, as our work is mainly to manufacture products and customization and pack orders to ship, we have decided not to establish remote work for the time being. This may be revised without prior notice, and if so, this article will be updated accordingly.

Shipping & Delivery

We still ship orders normally, as we have been doing for the past year.

Rest assured that there is no change in our capacity to ship and deliver your orders. Shipping conditions with all carriers remain the same, and if Japan Post shipments are still suspended in many countries (and notably Australia and the US), we can still deliver almost all countries in the world with FedEx, DHL and UPS, as we have been doing for the past months.
Additional "covid" fees charged by all carriers are still entirely supported by Seido and will not be charged at checkout. A flat 800 JPY (8 USD / 7 EUR) is charged at checkout for small orders (under 1 kg) with for destination a country that Japan Post cannot serve.

Thank you very much for your continued support and understanding!
Please stay safe and take care.