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I just ordered an Arena navy blue swim brief from Rakuten and it seemed a bit scary.
For those of you who have ordered from there - what's the average shipping time\costs? It's odd that they seem able to add customs charges\shipping not included in the final sale price. I'm also hoping it's a secure transaction and I won't have to worry about my information getting stolen or anything.

What are your experiences with Rakuten?

One of the members here, Pooablo, has successfully bought from Rakuten.

Sadly this post is 2 days old since I'm still on manual post approval apparently (Edit: oops, nevermind, I guess I'm good to go - this posted immediately). But anyways it seems it takes forever for them to charge you for the items, I guess that's because of the customs charge. So far my package is on its way from Japan. I'm glad they have tracking.

I'm just afraid I got the wrong size. I'm 5'5" and 120lbs right now not having worked out in a while and from what I've seen the smalls are scarily small. They had no mediums in that store for any of the colors. They were on sale at a good price, so I'm not surprised. I did the conversions in the sizing chart and deducted that I'd need a Small based on that so, we'll see I guess...

And yes, he's why I went looking on Rakuten.

I would love to see pics when they arrive

briefboy64 wrote:I'm 5'5" and 120lbs right now not having worked out in a while and from what I've seen the smalls are scarily small. They had no mediums in that store for any of the colors. They were on sale at a good price, so I'm not surprised. I did the conversions in the sizing chart and deducted that I'd need a Small based on that so, we'll see I guess...

Well, they do run really, really small. My Japan Arena jammers are a large (I'm a 30 waist/5'10'/140) and usually buy a US small in speeds). They're super tight. It's not like I put them on as much as I apply them, tugging and pulling and adjusting like a tight wet suit. But once they're on they're really comfortable and I've easily worn them all day to try to stretch them a little. (so far they haven't stretched much, and they don't loosen up when they're wet either) The briefs should be different since they don't have skinny legs like the jammers. If you have a small butt, that will help.

Well sadly for me, it's been reported to me by a third party that my ass is small.

It only really got like that recently though since I haven't gone cycling in 2 years... Working as a cashier totally kills your motivation (but that's ending soon, and hopefully I'll have more money to buy more speedos, and more motivation to hit the weights again to look good in them! ).

I'm really hoping I'm not going to regret this purchase and everything will turn out OK. If I need to sell it here, I hope someone can take a small, because I'm not dealing with Ebay.

briefboy64 wrote:Well sadly for me, it's been reported to me by a third party that my ass is small.

It only really got like that recently though since I haven't gone cycling in 2 years... Working as a cashier totally kills your motivation (but that's ending soon, and hopefully I'll have more money to buy more speedos, and more motivation to hit the weights again to look good in them! ).

I'm really hoping I'm not going to regret this purchase and everything will turn out OK. If I need to sell it here, I hope someone can take a small, because I'm not dealing with Ebay.

Having a small butt might be a good thing with this new suit. And your speedo brief style suit should stretch way more than those tech fabric jammers I bought. I've downsized to a 26 in some U.S. sized speedos and they looked okay.

Well, it's not small, but it's not as muscular as it was 2 years ago.

Anyways, impressively enough, the suit came in today. I ordered two other suits (one out of stock sadly) from a swim shop here in NJ that's 20 minutes from me and it hasn't even shipped yet for whatever reason.

The fabric is nice, the Fina heat label on the back is an eyesore sadly, but the fit seems OK although a bit tight. Very impressed with this suit and the fabric feels awesome. That said, I will probably go with a Medium on my next purchase. If I had been working out this summer I probably would have less bf% and therefore less of a squeezed look.

Pics on my thread in the pics forum later.

briefboy64 wrote: Anyways, impressively enough, the suit came in today. lllll
The fabric is nice, the Fina heat label on the back is an eyesore sadly, but the fit seems OK although a bit tight. Very impressed with this suit and the fabric feels awesome. That said, I will probably go with a Medium on my next purchase. If I had been working out this summer I probably would have less bf% and therefore less of a squeezed look.

Pics on my thread in the pics forum later.

Woo. Can't wait. Ummm, you came out of this pretty well. BTW, the squeezed look is in in Japan. Google Aqux and take a look at their models. Definitely squeezed.... TTYL