My son is into Pokemon and buying these English sets is so expensive. Someone recommended having him open Japanese because it’s significantly cheaper, however I do not know where to buy direct. The only booster boxes I can find are scalped prices on marketplace.

Does anyone have experience buying direct from Japan? I tried Japanese Amazon but it was quite expensive. Looking for resources or links to articles that would assist. Willing to pay fg for help too

You can't buy directly from Japan's Pokemon Center but you can use other platforms to buy from like https://buyee.jp/?lang=en but you can still get scammed especially if the product seller knows they are shipping to a proxy seller. They will open the booster box and replace the contents with stacks of paper or whatever to make it equal weight to an untampered booster box then reseal the plastic wrap. There's no refunds if you get scammed.

The best way to buy Japanese Pokemon Cards is to buy it from shops that have already imported the product.

Japan MSRP is around $40 USD if you were allow to buy it directly from the Pokemon Center. Does not include shipping and import taxes.

The lowest you can get it for is around $50-$75 depending on the set. High demand sets are $100+

https://safari-zone.com/collections/japanese-pokemon-booster-boxes

https://www.smokeandmirrorshobby.com/collections/pokemon-japanese-booster-boxes?filter.v.availability=1&sort_by=price-ascending

https://sakurascardshop.com/collections/japanese-pokemon

https://the-game-capital.com/collections/japanese-pokemon-cards?page=1&sort_by=price-ascending

https://www.pokene.com/japanese-pokemon-cards?sort=price_ascending

https://texaspokemart.com/collections/japanese-products?page=1&sort_by=price-ascending

What's even cheaper than Japanese is Korean. I think there's no guaranteed SIR per box. You can find special sets of Prismatic Evolutions / Terastial Festival for around $40-60. If the sites I list don't have them, you can check "E" and ends with a "Y" auction site. You can get it there from sellers with over 5,000 positive feedback rating. Just check seller location before you buy.

This is helpful, I will check these links. I guess I failed to mention that I am in Canada too, so not sure if they will ship here

You'll have to pay import taxes and shipping.

https://hobbiesville.com/collections/japanese-pokemon

This one is located in Canada.

You can use this site to look at the card list: https://www.pokedata.io/sets#JAPANESE

Unfortunately, Hobbiesville is the worst card shop ever. Their customer service and prices are worse than scalpers. They did pre release for JT and then 3 weeks before release date they went back to all the orders and asked people to pay another $35 for the tariffs.

Is there not a way to buy direct from Japan and import them myself and remove the middle man? I would love to buy a case or 2 for every set.

You can buy from independent shops but all of them are out of stock. You'll have to wait for the next reprint. Here's one shop: https://jyw-pokeca.com/collections/expansion-booster-high-class-pack