First I was thinking of getting the camera using the discounts when renewing the internet connection. But I figured that getting the cash-back instead would yield a bigger profit. Hence I decided to buy the camera with full forefront payment and get the cash-back from the internet connection separately. This way, it would total to about ¥57,000 in return if I get the full amount. If I bought the camera with the discount, I would only get ¥40,000 worth discount. It would take a bit longer so I decided to get the camera ASAP.
The camera cost me ¥127,000. This is the most amount of money that I have spent at once – ever!
I bought it from EC-Current. I had not bought anything from them before but buying stuff in Japan is pretty safe, especially if the shop is listed on Kakaku. There was a couple of cheaper options, but I couldn’t use the credit card with those shops. It doesn’t really matter because when I use the credit card, I get 1% point from Rakuten, which would amount to ¥1,270 for this particular purchase. It brought own the effective price to ¥125,730 which was only slightly more expensive than the cheapest option. But it didn’t stop there. There was an offer from Rakuten credit card service where if I split the amount into two and paid it over two months (with no interest), they would give me ¥1,000 worth of points. I guess they do this so that you get the taste of splitting the amount into multiple turns. They start charging interest when you split it into 3 or more turns. Anyways, this meant that the whole points scene made it the cheapest option.
