I just received my Akita from pricejapan two days ago. I did a lot of pricing, looking around, checking e-bay and settled on pricejapan. They have the lowest price for brand new product, and ship very, very fast. I had my order in five days, two of which were saturday and sunday.
You get the unopened retail box, proof of purchase (for warranty purposes), the driver CD (for usb connection to windows XP computer), some peace of mind of knowing the product is covered against defects for the next year, even though you have to pay for all shipping costs to and from pricejapan (I believe they will serve as your agent in the warranty process dealing with Sharp Japan). You also get a USB (not host) cable and EA-72 adapter that is very slick and compact and works fine in the U.S. The manuals are useless unless you know Japanese. I like the idea of being able to have and keep EVERYTHING that came in the box, including the box, to preserve resale value.
E-bay is too shady unless you either know the seller from these forums or they are able to satisfactorily answer all of your questions.
That being said, if you don't want to pay shipping costs for possible warranty services, go with one of the other vendors that offer that support. Some of the other vendors have staff tech people that can fix some problems for free without shipping it off to Japan.
For me, I try to take extremely good care of my electronics and have very rarely needed warranty support for something that I didn't screw up on my own. I don't think Sharp Japan is going to be very willing to go the extra mile for foreigners. In the end, you pays your money, you takes your chances.
Z_Attorney
