Warren:

During the World Cruise 2008, my camcorder failed when in NZ and I phoned home to my daughter and she got another one on Amazon.com and shipped it to me via Regent Voyager Agent in Osaka via USPS as a gift therefore no duty, etc. All went smoothly and I was one relieved chap as I do a lot of videotaping. Shipping was perhaps $40.

I kind of forget the scenario of problems that my daughter encountered before the Postal Dept. assisted us but it was quite a bit more expensive via competitors or others such as UPS could not ship electronics to Japan. I did make sure that delivery time allowed for any delay.

I looked for a replacement camera in Cairns I believe and they were PAL and not NTSC and they were expensive.

Hope this helps.

Cheers! Ray
P.S. Amazon couldn't ship it to me direct.