Hello everyone,
I just decided to take the jump for an 860 (the 3k is too rich for my blood at the moment). Anyway, I have an aunt travelling to Japan, and she said she could get me one, trouble is, she isn't very knowledgeable in technology.

Price Japan.com said the price for one of these is about 430,000 yen in Kakaku (sp?) Is this store like Best Buy with stores all over Japan? or is it just a store online. I'm sorry if this question sounds dumb but i don't know any japanese.

I've heard that the place to go is the district of Akihabara. Do you have to walk a lot to find a new one at a great price?

Are there stores like Best Buy or Circuit City (in Akihabara or in Japan as a whole) where I could just point her to go to and get it?

Thank you

Alberto

kakaku.com is a price search site, similar to sites such as pricewatch.com; all of the stores listed are online stores. (By the way, "kakaku" in Japanese means "price").

Your best bet is probably looking at retail stores such as Sofmap (www.sofmap.com) or BicCamera (www.biccamera.com). I know of at least two Sofmap locations in Tokyo, one in Shinjuku and one in Akihabara. The prices at a retail store are probably going to be a little higher than buying online. Sofmap (at least in Shinjuku) also sells used goods; if you don't mind buying used, you may be able to save some money by going that route.

- ashikase
- anpachi, gifu, japan

Kakaku is an online service that finds the best available prices - it itself is not a store. A lot of the stores that it lists are web stores. some have physical stores and they are all over the place. If you can read Japanese enough you can find the address and often a map to the store too.

In general the best place to buy electrical stuff is Akihabara. It's quite large and unless you really know the place or stick to the big stores you can easily spend a day wandering around looking for something (when you know the place you often spend several days wandering around )

Most of the big chain electrical stores stock the Zaurus, but you will probably pay more like 60,000 yen for one.

Nothing really like Best Buy that I've found here. Places (in Osaka at least) tend to be small specialty shops (often best prices) or the large stock one or 2 of everything stores that have everything at 10-15% off manufactures prices.

Sorry I can't be of any real help.

Stu

I liked shopping in DenDen town in Osaka better than Akihabara. DenDen town is all stretched out in a straight line, while Akihabara is all piled on top of itself - much harder to navigate.

We got our 860s from Au (Au by KDDI is what it says on the bag), which is a cell phone store. We saw them on a PriceJapane page back in September for ~8,000 yen off the then going price. We paid 48000 yen or so, with a colleague of my friend in Japan picking them up for us.

When I was there in October, used 860 in Sofmap were running 47500 yen, 760's for 44500, and 750's for about 38000.

Good things to look for while you're there are accessories - I got my remote for 1800 yen used, a Pilot Pentopia extensible stylus made especially for the Z, etc. (And the camera, which was around 7000 or so, expensive but a nice toy.

The Remote makes the Z as an MP3 player, and the stylus if far better than any shipped with a Z. (The metal stylus that shipped with the 5500 is a close second, but extensible rules - my favorite sylus to use is the one from my touchscreen Libretto which is much longer than a PDA stylus, but completely un-portable ;_; )