[jasonbvr]

Now to answer the original question, should you buy a camera in the US and bring it or buy one in Japan depends primarily on which one you want. If you wanted something like say the Olympus Stylus 795 SW, you will want to buy that here because it is not officially available in the US and can only be bought at a 100 dollar markup because it is imported. There are certain new models of Japanese made cameras available in Japan that are not yet currently in the US. Now let's say you want a Kodak camera, you have to get that in the US. Kodak does not sell in Japan because they don't have Japanese language support on there cameras. The best way to decide would be to compare prices on amazon.com to the prices on amazon.co.jp. This will give you a good idea of the potential savings.