Tip for people looking to buy a HHKB...
Posted: 05 Feb 2014, 17:59
I wanted to share this to anyone considering buying a Topre board, especially in Europe where no HHKB (or reasonably priced RF for that matter) exist.
I followed the guide on reddit:
http://en.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboa ... mazoncojp/
Ordered the keyboard from the Japanese Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/PFU-Hacking-Key ... _6?ie=UTF8
Shipped it using the forwarding service Anislo:
https://anislo.jp/
Then had them ship it to my friend's Swiss address (slightly lower tax than EU, I work at CERN on the border between Switzerland and France).
My expenses were:
Keyboard: 29,800 JPY
Express shipping with insurance: 4.280 JPY
Swiss import tax: 50 CHF
Using Google's conversion rates this corresponds to ~392 USD or ~290 EUR.
So including shipping to Japan, shipping to Switzerland and import tax, I paid less than what the keyboard itself would cost on EK. For US residents the import tax is probably even cheaper.
I can highly recommend this technique, especially to European citizens, for getting a considerably cheaper HHKB. In my case I saved probably 100 USD compared to EK, and I even paid for express shipping and had it within one week. Although Anislo might seem a bit shady because of the very sparse information on their website, they are very efficient and easy to use.
Now for getting used to the layout...
I followed the guide on reddit:
http://en.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboa ... mazoncojp/
Ordered the keyboard from the Japanese Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/PFU-Hacking-Key ... _6?ie=UTF8
Shipped it using the forwarding service Anislo:
https://anislo.jp/
Then had them ship it to my friend's Swiss address (slightly lower tax than EU, I work at CERN on the border between Switzerland and France).
My expenses were:
Keyboard: 29,800 JPY
Express shipping with insurance: 4.280 JPY
Swiss import tax: 50 CHF
Using Google's conversion rates this corresponds to ~392 USD or ~290 EUR.
So including shipping to Japan, shipping to Switzerland and import tax, I paid less than what the keyboard itself would cost on EK. For US residents the import tax is probably even cheaper.
I can highly recommend this technique, especially to European citizens, for getting a considerably cheaper HHKB. In my case I saved probably 100 USD compared to EK, and I even paid for express shipping and had it within one week. Although Anislo might seem a bit shady because of the very sparse information on their website, they are very efficient and easy to use.
Now for getting used to the layout...