In Narita, Japan, any place to find/buy an Arrangeball or vintage?

[BC3]

I have a friend who flies regularly to Narita in Japan and is willing to bring somethings back for me. Anyone have any contacts or know of any parlors or shops that might have something?

I know its a long shot, but worth asking the question.

thanks, Bc3

[emmadog]

Good question. Myself and a few others have both pondered and followed up on this and the short answer is arepachis are as rare there as they are here if not more so. At least when it comes to finding them for sale. I've spoke with separate contacts in Japan and all their answers reflected what I mentioned above. Plus there's the the fact that these machines are in high demand by collectors and if someone did have a contact/source they'd likely keep it to themselves. But...I don't think that is happening since most if not all the arepachis owned here have been bought from sources available to all.

[candyflip]

I have a friend who flies regularly to Narita in Japan and is willing to bring somethings back for me. Anyone have any contacts or know of any parlors or shops that might have something?

I know its a long shot, but worth asking the question.

thanks, Bc3

Hi BC3,

DISCLAIMER: I lived in Japan for 3 years.

Narita is the main international airport for Tokyo, and is in the prefecture of Chiba (my old stomping ground), south of the capital. Basically, its full of rice fields and farmers. Narita itself is in the middle of nowhere and takes about 40 mins to Tokyo by Express service trains, or an hour or more by car on the Expressway (depending on traffic). So although it has plenty of parlors, you're not going to find a lot of secondhand machines being sold down there. If you did, Arrangeballs will be the rarer find.

Second, if you did manage to find something, how is your friend going to transport a 40 kg wrapped up machine back with him on a regular commuter flight? Or get the shop he buys it from to organise shipping for you (many won't transport overseras, as they've not had to do it before)?

One way to do it *might* be to buy an Arrangeball on Yahoo JP (say that costs you 20,000-30,000 yen up front), get it transported to a Chiba address somewhere that your friend might know of or use (say a hotel he stays at) which might cost another 3-4000 yen, then have him pick it up and transport it back somehow on a commercial flight as extra baggage, or organise a freight forward somehow (hope he has excellent Japanese)... Figure out those further costs for yourself.

I guess its possible, but you'd need a LOT of little ducks to line up just right for you...

My thought would be that this would be no cheaper than getting someone like japamart.com to do it for you - probably cost you more actually.