I've spent more time than is good for me on digimart.net. That's basically an online shopping mall for guitar stores. I have google chrome installed and it translates automatically from Japanese to English (enough to make it understandable). Many of the stores there don't do international shipping but enough do. And the nice thing is you can go there every day and wait till a good deal comes along. For instance, last week Musicland offered a couple of LS160 violin finish Tokais there (on Digimart) for 100,000 Yen (regular price 134,000). They were flametops though.
A good place for second hand gear (and the occasional new piece) is Yahoo Auctions Japan (which is to them what Ebay is to us), and use Rinkya (forwarding service). Now with the shipping, taxes and Rinkya fees, you may not save much.
Lastly, there's several sellers on Ebay that can order Tokais for you. I ordered one last month from a billcasexu1981. I'll have to wait 5 months as it's being made on order, but all in all I thought I got a good deal, and the shipping costs weren't bad. And I'm lucky to live in a country where import taxes are just 7%. I would first check with the Ebay sellers, I think that will tell you immediately whether Richtone's prices are ballpark the same or if you can make substantial savings.
