Just found this website via a flyer at Naniwa (restaurant) in NYC.
Prices are OK. They sell Japanese dictionaries,desktops,
laptops,and even PS3s!

http://www.kocomputer.com
431 5th Ave 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10016

I'm going there to check it out.
Will give a report when I get back.

Does anyone know of any other stores like this
in the NYC area?

Thanks.

Hey good find!

I live in NYC, but I've never heard of this. The only Japanese places I frequent are the restaurants and the bookstores (Kinokuniya and Book Off).

Visited the store, but it's closed from Saturday 11/1/2008 to 11/4/2008.
Will try next week and get back to everyone.

Man, all the cool JP stuff is in NYC. Makes me hate AZ.

Ahh, thanks for the heads up, chamcham. I'll have to check back with it after that.

awesome, being able to save on shipping on import ds games will be nice. thanks!

Check the prices against Kakaku first, and make sure you're not getting ripped off. It's hard to tell these days.

http://kakaku.com/

It's a price comparison search engine for most consumer electronics in Japan. It'll give you a good idea of the lowest prices you can get over there, and just how much of a convenience premium you're going to pay from using a store over here over an importer.

By checking out kakaku (thanks rich_f!) and the kocomputer's site, they are definitely charging and significant premium on computers. I checked the new macbooks out, and the ones on kakaku are about 1600, like it should be. However, kocomputers is about 2000, so quite a bit more.

Guess they charge shipping and a little extra fee, as well.

Why would you want a Japanese Macbook anyways? No one actually types in kana so all you get out of it is punctuation keys in weird places, a tiny spacebar, and kana/eisuu keys (which can be had on a mac with a western keyboard by using something like Keyremap4macbook).

If you decide to skip a retailer in the US and use an importer in Japan to get what you want over there, just keep in mind that all importers will charge a percentage fee of the price of the thing you want imported, so get used to the idea of getting hit up for extra cash.

Not to mention shipping from Japan as well can pretty darn expensive if you want to get your electronics any time before next year.

I just figured I'd mention kakaku so you could get an idea of the real value of some of those items. Just because it's JP doesn't mean it's worth a 25-30% markup. The NA version of the same laptop can usually be had for much cheaper, with much less hassle, and will be a hell of a lot easier to get repaired if it breaks. (Unless you move to Japan, I guess.)

The ideal solution is to just wait until you go there and buy it yourself, because then you can get points on your Bic or Yodobashi Camera card for your trouble. (Point cards rock.)

Jarvik7 Wrote:Why would you want a Japanese Macbook anyways? No one actually types in kana so all you get out of it is punctuation keys in weird places, a tiny spacebar, and kana/eisuu keys (which can be had on a mac with a western keyboard by using something like Keyremap4macbook).

Yeah I don't want a Japanese macbook... with mac there really is no big difference with the OS, as I believe you can change it anyway. I was just comparing prices to see, generally, how they were.