kusunokimasahige

My sincere and heartfelt condolences. Very sad news indeed. HJ

Oh man these are so cool ! I am going to ask a friend of mine who is a gunsmith if he could make me one

Dear all, it is with a sad heart I have to inform all of you that Yoshihara Yoshikazu, son of Yoshihara Yoshindo passed away may 1st. I received the news via Mike Yamasaki who got permission of the family to make it known. He wrote about it on the Tetsugendo.com facebook page. My heart goes out to his father and family and to all who knew him. Yoshihara Yoshindo and Yoshihara Yoshikazu

Beautiful !

Bringing a sword to Les Gold would be hilarious.... Though Detroit is not that nice of a city I believe.

Thank you for the link to that site Malcolm !

Very sad news indeed. My sincere condoleances.

That would be a great option, yes

Well I might try my hand at some shikoro yes. But mainly starting out with small wood placques and bowls. These tubes are fairly small. (originally intended for fishing rods). Some do not even use gloves.... (I will).

Be sure that if you get to know who that guy is you post a photo on the wall of shame of the 419eater site.

Yep John, wrote them a few weeks ago and they refused to send takarabune to the Netherlands.

One small addition. The Dutch Tax system will be changed a few percent higher. Basically VAT is 21% for normal items, for Antiques it is 6% which will go up to 9%. Asking the person shipping the item to write down the Tariff code in large letters on the invoice or parcel might at times help. Dutch customs however are quite sharp on any Ivory items which do not have a CITES declaration with it as well as for instance turtle shell items (My turtleback shaped Jingasa was opened just for that reason). From 22 Euro onward you pay VAT on any imported item, from 150 Euro onward you pay Duties (Customs fees). Plus any other handling costs the Postal agencies deem fit. Sending goods with DHL and FedEx is a little easier than the regular Postal service in the Netherlands since the Postal services (TNT and PostNL) work with C.O.D. for the taxes. FedEx at least just delivers the goods and later sends an invoice for tax due.

The only problem I have is that I cannot seem to find the Koiki and Takarabune tobacco for it. The last one is made in Belgium but that company refuses to sell within Europe. The only other way to get this tobacco, or so it seems is having friends take it with them for me or use a personal shopper, with the risk of customs checking the package and me paying a fine. Grrrrmbl.

That looks great ! I will start with smaller objects. This just arrived from Japan :

All way above my budget