Import price check · snapshot September 27, 2026
Mark V: Amazon.com vs. Amazon.co.jp landed cost
A classic, inexpensive rubber where shipping from Japan doesn't just eat the savings -- it makes the import cost more than buying it in the US.
Not worth it — costs more landedMark V is Yasaka's long-running, inexpensive classic rubber -- exactly the kind of low-priced item where a flat cross-border shipping fee is most likely to wipe out any savings. We checked it to see just how badly that plays out.
Amazon.com's standard listing is $26.00. Amazon.co.jp's listing (a different ASIN from the US one, since we couldn't find a shared listing between the two sites for this item) is cheaper on paper at $17.36 -- but shipping to a US address was quoted at $17.31, almost as much as the rubber itself, for a landed cost of $34.67.
| Source | Item price | Shipping to US | Landed total | Visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon.com2.0mm, red -- standard US listing | $26.00 | — | $26.00 | Visit ↗ |
| Amazon.co.jp2.0mm ("厚"), red -- a different ASIN from the US listing; ships to US | $17.36 | $17.31 | $34.67 | Visit ↗ |
Landed from Japan actually costs $8.67 more (about 33%) than Amazon.com, captured September 27, 2026.
What this means for you
Importing this one would cost $8.67 more than just buying it on Amazon.com -- about 33% worse, not better. This is the clearest example in this guide of why landed cost matters: looking only at the sticker price ($17.36 vs. $26.00) makes Japan look like the deal, but once shipping is added in, it's the more expensive option.
The general pattern holds across cheap rubbers: a roughly flat $17-23 Amazon.co.jp shipping fee needs a big enough item price to be worth absorbing. On something under $30, it usually isn't -- buy rubber like this domestically instead.
Methodology
How we checked this: on September 27, 2026, we visited Amazon.com and Amazon.co.jp directly and recorded the listed price and, for Amazon.co.jp, the shipping fee quoted to a US address (Bellevue, WA). Where the identical item is listed under the same Amazon product ID (ASIN) on both sites, we note that below -- it's the cleanest possible comparison, since it rules out us accidentally comparing two different products.
"Landed cost" on this page means Amazon.co.jp's item price plus that quoted shipping fee, added together. It is still not a full checkout total: US customs duty was not assessed for this snapshot and can apply on top of what's shown here. Amazon.co.jp displayed its prices already converted to USD for the account we used; we did not perform a separate currency conversion. This is a manual, one-time snapshot, not a live price feed -- always confirm destination, shipping cost, and any duty on Amazon's own checkout page before ordering, and treat every number on this page as a starting point, not today's price.
Why no Butterfly? Every Butterfly product we tried to check showed "this item can't be shipped to your selected delivery location" on Amazon.co.jp -- a brand-wide shipping block, not a one-off. So this round of guides covers STIGA, Nittaku, and Yasaka products instead, which do ship to US addresses.