Technics SL-1210GAE Anniversary delivery .

Not sure why the Japs do this but the US always takes the back of the bus.

As a matter of fact in the US a few distributors got the first few orders of this specific turntable first than in other countries, as early as end of June, the UK for example they are experiencing more delays than in the US, now I don't know about the rest of Europe and Asia which seems to be prioritized, maybe the US and the UK are in the back of the bus like you are saying 

Everything I have purchased from Russia have been delivered by USPS but with very high delays, apparently the delay happens in the US due to customs, Lew, at some point I used to be a big supporter and believed on the idea of supporting the Federal Mail System above private carriers, they screwed up so many times with my stuff and they avoid any liability hence I don't use USPS except when sending my taxes to the Treasury.Chak, Fedex and DHL from Japan on the specific things I have purchased (headshells and such) have been covered by the sellers as "free shipping", I purchased recently the Live in Japan (Deep Purple) and took less than a week from Japan to arrive via Fedex, $23 I paid for shipping, it is kind of high yes but considering it is international well I guess I have no choice.

If you ever visit Tokyo, you’ll observe the huge contrast between their audio marketplace and ours.

I would like that to be my next stop in my travels, our friend Chakster with all his passion for Japanese vintage have gotten me into researching what they made, they truly make remarkable things, I like knives (and this conversation is not weird at all lol) and real japanese knives are masterpieces, just like audio stuff and such.

Everything I’ve bought from Japan, save a few overweight items, I had shipped EMS which delivers via USPS here.  FedEx and the automatic duties is a deterrent.   

Japan post (EMS) is probably the best in the world. They are superfine, I bought hundreds of records from Japan and never had any issue.

I have my records in Tokyo since April, shipping by Japan post to Russia (or to USA) is impossible now, when I checked DHL, UPS, FEDEX the price for shipping to USA is just insane (very expensive). I think I will just ship by seamail to Russia (very cheap).