I dont see why you want this one over the tojiro. I prefer the looks of a japanese knife over a german any day. And its not really a cheap date for what it is.... I bought a shun bread knife from a coworker for 20 bucks. I guess I got pretty lucky with the price considering the shuns are 185 dollar knives. But the tojiro just gets such good reviews. I don't think that if I were to buy one today I would consider anything but the tojiro.