Originally Posted by
ray1966
Seems quite expensive if you plan to mail 2 kg to the United States.
Yup - that's why I suggested looking at shipping before you went shopping. You don't want to spend $20 on a gift - and $35 for shipping.
And I was serious about the chopsticks and chopstick holders. I was able to buy some great contemporary chopstick holders for about $1.50 each at a higher end department store.
IMO - shopping in Japan was for the most part pretty expensive. And there isn't all that much you can't get in the United States. Except perhaps electrical appliances that are 100% ok with Japanese electricity/plugs. Various food items. And certain design items. So I mostly went window shopping.
All I bought to take home were the chopstick holders - and a great backpack that was made in Japan and not available in the US (I needed the latter for our trip - and have used it on many trips since then). Things like chocolates were pretty much gone within 2 days of purchase
. IIRC - I bought both the chopstick holders and the backpack at Mitsukoshi in Ginza.
Another consideration if you're shipping is duty fees. You get a pretty decent duty-free allowance coming home if you have stuff with you. But not if you ship things IIRC. And duty fees (there's like 10,000 pages of regs) can be seemingly irrational. For example - I had my eye on a nice set of European stainless flatware for a long time. Only sold in Europe. And the duty was ridiculous - like 50-70% (designed to reduce competition/dumping from non-US producers of cheap stainless flatware). OTOH - at the time - there was no import duty on gold flatware (no trade issues involved).
BTW - what were you thinking of buying? Robyn