Originally Posted by
DrDrDr56
Please do excuse me but I would request you not make assumptions on my efforts, having traveled to over 40 individual shops here, and calling many more using my limited japanese to try and see if they had any in stock. That in addition to the dozens of stores i've called in Boston, New Haven and New York looking for the same. To say that someone isn't putting in the effort--simply untrue. My days here in Osaka and Tokyo have been entirely dedicated to running to various shops to look.
If you have any leads, I would appreciate it, but attached are even the stores i hit the last two days in Osaka and what my call list looked like for even 15 minutes the other night. I'm trying harddd.
Wasn't talking about you specifically, just addressing the post above and some common themes of this thread.
Knowing you're based in Boston would have helped, quite simply you will have a much easier time finding it for retail near your home rather than spending your whole time in Japan trying to track down a needle in a haystack , unless of course that was the sole purpose of your trip.
As I mentioned above, spend your time and money at one of the amazing whisky bars and hunt when you get home. You can likely grab a Y18 airport duty free bottle on your way home due to lack of travelers, not retail but certainly nowhere near the 80k you mentioned.
There's WAY more Yamazaki 18 to be found at close to retail in the Boston/NYC area than in Japan.
If you don't speak Japanese, that will be make it even more difficult.
I just recently scored 6 bottles of Chichibu US edition for retail price ($250, feel free to Google market rates) from a wine shop in Boston and I dont even live there.