I think there are probably some really cool Japanese notebooks that never make it to the US or Europe. This company used to make them available: http://www.dynamism.com/index.shtml , but looking now, I don't see anything we can't get outside of Japan (at first glance).
I worked for a company that sold laptops. We had a request from abroad to purchase five laptops and pay equal amounts on four credit cards held in different names. That doesn't look even vaguely legitimate. Nor was it an isolated incident.
Once you take into account more plausable fraud, damages, refunds and Japanese versions of Windows, I'd presume that selling Japanese laptops outside of Japan is a really quick way of getting burned.
Meaning you worked for a japanese company? A friend of mine bought a notebook from dynamism a couple of years ago, so it works. But anyway, I don't want to plug them.
Back then subnotebooks were very rare in Europe (presumably the market didn't want them), but they were popular in Japan, that is why we checked with dynamism. These days, there are some more subotebooks available in the US and Europe, so maybe dynamism doesn't matter anymore.
