Does anybody here know of a good place in Japan to buy a GL2 (PAL)?

New or used? And where in Japan are you?

In Tokyo, I do most of my shopping at Bic Camera. The one near the West exit of Shinjuku Station seems to have a good selection of video equipment. There's also a great video retailer tucked away in Broadway mall, outside of Nakano station. It's on the fourth floor. They don't stock a lot of cameras, but they can order just about everything. I've been able to negotiate prices with them.

I'm looking for a new one, and if you know of a place in Kyoto/Osaka area that would be great.
But if you usually do your shopping at Bic Camera, I probably could go to any of the bigger stores and ask them to order a PAL model. One of the Ninomiya stores in Osaka had a special section with export models, but no Canons. And when I asked about international insurance, they said that Canon didn't give it but Sony did. Maybe because they didn't have any Canons?
On the internet I haven't found anything about PAL models. At least not at the cheaper stores. I assume that they will be more expensive compared to the NTSC models, and more difficult to negotiate the price down.

You have a very interesting Web site filled with little goodies. Your video vignettes are fun to watch. Did you shoot the stills that you use on your page headers? Very vivid imagery in a spartan Japanese style. Kudos.

One of our members is from Osaka... hang in there and I bet he'll chime in.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ken Tanaka : You have a very interesting Web site filled with little goodies. Your video vignettes are fun to watch. Did you shoot the stills that you use on your page headers? Very vivid imagery in a spartan Japanese style. Kudos. -->>>

Oh, thanks :-)
The stills are video frames.
I still haven't found a good way to compress the movies without loosing too much, or getting too large files.
The GL1 I've used so far is dying. First time when I had to repair it, the zoome moved by itself and the manual brightness control had its own mind. Yesterday I left it to be repaired again. This time the cam (by itself) stops recording even the tape moves forward, and after 10-30sec starts recording again. Of course, when I'm recording, everything looks fine, but later when I look at the shots there are long breaks without time code and blocky sekvenses.

Did someone say Osaka? I live in the Big O, I know of one store in Den Den Town that sells electronics for different countries, with different electrical ratings, they might have some PAL cameras. They have sign out front in several languages and a tax free notice. Don't know the name of the store, it's on the main street, Sakaisuji.

The two stores that I buy stuff from, Kinki Video and Ippinkan might be able to order one. They sell used betacams, cranes, and used xl-1, all the good stuff.

www.videokinki.co.jp

video kinki 6636-6262

www.ippinkan.com/

If you are coming down from Nipponbashi station, exit #10, you walk down South on the right side of the street, at 4 chome, there will be a tool store on the corner, make a right turn and there should be the smell of curry in the air, there's a curry shop with a yellow sign, go down that street(Sakaisuji 4 Chome) past the stop light, Ippinkan is about 15 meters from the stop light on the left side of the street. Kinki Video is on the same side of the street, before you get to Ippinkan, there's a map on their website.

I'm heading into Den Den Town tomorrow to buy some tapes, I'll swing by there and ask Mr. Fukunaga about the PAL GL2. Here's the phone for Ippinkan:
6644-9101.

For those of you outside of Japan, Kinki is not the Kinky most people know of, Kinki is the Osaka area, also known as Kansai, as in Kansai International Airport, the new int. airport in Osaka, call letters, KIX. So they don't sell adult videos at that store, in case some of you were wondering that:)

Don't waste your time talking to the people at the big department stores, they dont' know much and they will give you wrong information most of the time. The people at Video Kinki and Ippinkan know there stuff.

If you wanted a used GL2 NTSC, they might have some at those places. I see several used GL1/2's, VX-2000's at Video Kinki when I stop in there sometimes.

A friend has a PAL Sony TRV something, not a 3 chip cam, she's going to have to get an NTSC camera pretty soon, she got hers from South Africa, where's she from, in the mean time I'll lend her my old VX-1000.

If you come into Osaka, let me know, another friend who also has an XL-1s lives here as well, he's also a DVinfoer. I go to Kyoto sometimes, usually around the Keihan Sanjo area, last time I filmed in Kyoto was at Cafe Independants last summer, some friends did an S/M performance there with drums and shamisens and chanting as the background music. Also forgot the kimono fashion show my friend was in, I think it was at some big hotel, New Kyoto something.