
My Man in Japan (2015) - kawera
https://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/my-man-in-japan-internet-shopping/
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nikhizzle
We received a toy monkey from a friend when my son was 11 months old. Soon, it
turned into his favorite companion.

Being cautious, I tried to buy another one but it was out of stock everywhere
in the Western Hemisphere. I finally found it in Tokyo at an importer of
specialty American toys who would not ship internationally. They were
extremely polite but refused to budge.

Thankfully, via a similar and very cheaply priced proxy service we soon got
it. To this day it is still sitting in it’s packaging, as the original is
still safe and sound.

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matte_black
I’ve always wanted men in various countries who could buy things for me in
obscure offline marketplaces. Rice cookers from Japan, gold from India, amber
fragments from Cambodia, antique ivory from Africa, meteorites from Siberia,
rugs from Morocco.

Unfortunately the biggest obstacle to setting up such a network is finding
people you can trust.

~~~
jsemrau
I would've thought that Facebook would have solved this problem already? What
is better than a friend within 6-degree separation ?

~~~
grogenaut
They're even worse because there is a penaltt cost of calling them out if they
cheat you that business doesn't have. If they're going to cheat you they don't
care about it but you do. There are all of the other grey area actions like
"was stolen".

Eg think of anything a shady or just incompetent relative might do, same thing
here.

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broabprobe
Is this not basically the concept of the J Peterman catalog? :)

