Originally Posted by
Q Shoe Guy
For lack of a better word , there are "gangs" that "hire" tourists to shop duty free for them. The gangs park their vans on the street and work the buyers by what's app /line/telegram or similar. Many of the things bought are put online to be sold immediately either within Japan or outside. There are shops located around that specialize in the resale of these goods. They government will keep on milking the tourist trade for as long as they are able , what with the low JPY vis a vis many currencies among other factors. At the beginning of the pandemic there were news reports of these gangs/groups catering their out cargo flights out of NRT. Anyway you look at it , 14 billion JPY fine for Apple is just the tip of the iceberg.
Thank you for that explanation. I had wondered if it followed a similar business model to that of the ticket reseller shops and kiosks that one finds near rail stations where members of the public are temporarily recruited to make purchases for nominal gains (with the tickets kiosks it might be either upfront - directed to buy a particular ticket with a credit card and be reimbursed in cash, or afterwards - for example, one might have some surplus 18 Seishun tickets that the kiosk will buy back from you and resell at a profit. There are obviously whole infrastructures in place for this kind of arbitrage).