Experience with bluewayjapan?

From what I've seen/read on the web the enterprise looks legit, but has anyone here tried to get knives from the guy running it that are not listed in his ebay-store? I know that I could simply shoot the guy a message through ebay, but before I do that I would like to know, if one has done it in the past and how it worked out...

The reason I'm asking is quite simple... Ashi Hamono has stopped taking orders from to individual customers recently. I totally get their reasoning, but it has created a bit of a conundrum for EU-buyers like me and a bunch of fellow German&Austrian knife geeks I "know" from the kitchen-cutlery sub-forum of a German general-knife board. We used to recommend getting an Ashi to a lot of guys that had 200-300USD to spare and where looking for a light-weight japanese knife with great F&F and good performance. Won't work anymore, unless we can find a decent alternate source... and regardless how much I appreciate the work Jon does and his dedication to the community, as a source for people buying on a budget from the EU he doesn't work out that well. Shipping from the US to EU is way more expensive than EMS shipping from Japan...esp. if one doesn't care about getting a saya, the price difference (esp. after taxes) is too big to ignore...which is why I bought my two Ginga petty knives from Ashi directly.

The only source I found so far is bluewayjapan... sells only through ebay, prices incl. shipping seem to be pretty close to the ones from the Ashi price list.. what keeps me from recommending the vendor (expect for the stupid board rules on the Messerforum and a lack of personal experience, which will be rectified when the ginga w2 I bought from him this week passes customs and gets delivered) is that it's an ebay store, so one only sees those products that are avaliable atm... I know that some vendors from global rakuten do business for items not listed via email ...say they have 1-2 items from a knife line on the shop page, but can acquire the rest...

My experience with keiichi has been extremely positive. You can definitely pm him if you want to order something that's not in his store atm.

Haven't ordered from Blueway myself, but always heard good things. Yes, shame he only sells on eBay, I guess. However, I haven't checked in a while if he's got a site going or something, somewhere. Emailing sounds like a good option. I sort of recall him going to some lengths to accomodate requests and answer questions for customers.

Bought 5 knives from him. Very fast shipping, good communication. One of the knives arrived with cracked handle (cheap Tadafusa nakiri), he immediately offered a refund. Great seller.

I purchased a Sakai Yusuke from him via eBay. Shipping was extremely quick and cost him more than I paid. He responded promptly to my questions. One of the easiest, fastest eBay transactions I've encountered.

just send him a message.

Agreed with posters above, great communication and fast shipping. If you ask him nicely he can order things in that's not listed in his store.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wow that is bad news about Ashi Hamono.
But Keiichi is absolutely trustworthy. Great communication, fast shipment and I have never read something negative about him.

Keiichi is legit. I've purchased many knives from him over the years and will continue to do so. Fast shipping too.

Wow, that's a ton of great replies in a very short amount of time... thanks folks, that pretty much answers my question.

JohnF said:

I purchased a Sakai Yusuke from him via eBay. Shipping was extremely quick and cost him more than I paid. He responded promptly to my questions. One of the easiest, fastest eBay transactions I've encountered.

Click to expand...

That's seems to be similar to my own experience. When a fellow knife geek posted the information on that German board on Monday, I started looking around for other sources...remembered that I've seen Ashis traded on ebay... lo and behold, bluewayjapan had a 240 and a 300 w2 suji listed. Two days later and without any pressing need for a big suji, I ended up buying the 300 on Wednesday for a whooping 188€/210$ (EMS shipping and crappy PayPal exchange rate included). Keiichi handed over the parcel to JP post on Thursday and according to tracking it passed German customs yesterday, so I guess it will arrive at my home on Monday or Tuesday.

Richard78 said:

Wow that is bad news about Ashi Hamono.
But Keiichi is absolutely trustworthy. Great communication, fast shipment and I have never read something negative about him.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it is.... not noticeably for me, because I after that suji I'm pretty much done with collecting "Lasers", not to mention that my knife collection starts to grow too big for a student like me. Think/Hope I'm down to 2 or maybe 3 further purchases. One is a Nakiri swap (so no growth), the other one is a decent bread knife (maybe a Güde... :lol2...third and "final" one would only happen, if a certain Austrian knife maker starts making kitchen knifes again... guess you have all the Gingas you need too...

But it surely is bad news for a ton of potential (first-time) customers here in Europe... I haven't kept score of how often Ashi gets recommended at the Messerforum, but it feels like anytime someone searches for a Wa-Gyuto/Petty/Santoku/Suji, doesn't wants the "bling bling" of a Damascus callding and the budget roughly fits the price of a Ginga, the majority of the recommendations are for getting a Ginga from Ashi Hamono directly...

Like I said...totally get why they stopped selling to individual customers, given how small the company is and how much production efficiency gets boosted if they only work on big orders for vendors and whole-sellers. Curious if one of the bigger EU vendors like cleancut.se or cuttingedge will go after that market (assuming they realize it's there...)

positive experience here.

Nothing but positive experiences for me too. His responds to messages pretty efficiently and he doesn't mind getting chatty if you ask him a bunch of questions. EMS prices are reasonable as well. My three orders from him have all been received within 3 days.

yeah I ordered from Keiichi, and it went well. good experience

Good guy...pay for EMS shipping.

Any idea if he can get Shigefusa Kitaeji's? Or Kato's?

doubt it. his selection leans much more towards the mid-low end stuff with an emphasis on sakai stuff. but you could always ask. even if he could get them, you you'd be waiting a while as with anyone else these days, i suspect.

Smurfmacaw said:

Any idea if he can get Shigefusa Kitaeji's? Or Kato's?

Click to expand...

Smurfmacaw said:

Any idea if he can get Shigefusa Kitaeji's? Or Kato's?

Click to expand...

Different parts of the country, different relationships, probably won't work that way, so minute chance. If so why not sell them already. Go to different sellers/suppliers for what they specialise in but, in a way, don't expect more

Asked Keiichi to get a Shige or Kato? Been there done that [emoji41]. He could not get any of them because the 2 bladesmiths are very low-volume and their products go through very few specialized dealers.

I asked quite a while ago, though, things might have changed.

As it happens, I ordered the 210mm Ashi Gyuto in 61 HRC around the same time Karnstein ordered his Suji. Arrived today, outstanding knife as expected, shipping for 7$ took 3days to Germany, another week through customs, cannot argue with that.

Another satisfied customer.

paper-crane said:

As it happens, I ordered the 210mm Ashi Gyuto in 61 HRC around the same time Karnstein ordered his Suji. Arrived today, outstanding knife as expected, shipping for 7$ took 3days to Germany, another week through customs, cannot argue with that.

Click to expand...

My experience so far is similar... except for the customs parts. Went through customs at the Airport within a day, because they handed off the work to the local customs office. At which it hasn't quite arrived yet, despite what the DHL tracking ID says (according to that it was handed over on Monday). Since no letter from the custom office arrived at my home so far, I called them yesterday and according to the officer on the phone it's still stuck in Limbo at the local DHL center and it couldn't have arrived on Monday, because they didn't get any parcels on that day... so much for online tracking.

So... knife is finally here. I picked it up on Tuesday, after roughly weeks of "fun" with the German postal service. Here's what happened in a nutshell: If you order something from Japan using EMS, it goes through German customs at the airport. Customs calculate the amount of import fees one has to pay and hand the parcel over to DHL Express. DHL Express then deliver the parcel to your doorstep and collect the fees. Now if customs has some problems with the invoice that's attached to parcel (can't be read, looks shady), they will forward the parcel to your local customs office. Who will ask you to come by, bring along a copy of the order confirmation, open the parcel and then pay your import fees.

Now if that happens, one would expect DHL Express to transport the parcel from airport customs to your local customs office. Which is not how it works. DHL Express does pick the parcel, but they deliver it to the local postal office (keep in mind that DHL is a division of Deutsche Post, the privatized successor of the German Federal Post office) responsible for supplying the local customs office and informing the original addressee that he has to pick it up at the customs office. That's where it got handed over on said Monday, but it stayed there for close to two weeks before it finally got handed over to customs.

Jeez... anyway, drove over and paid my fees. Had some mail exchange with Keiichi, because DHL tends react faster if the despatcher starts stepping on their toes...like it has been said, very nice and friendly guy...

Oh and here it is:

Looks nice, and probably worth the wait. It's Sunday so you'll have to slice some things with it today.

Asteger said:

Looks nice, and probably worth the wait. It's Sunday so you'll have to slice some things with it today.

Click to expand...

Nope, yesterdays dinner was pretty simple and didn't involve a lot of prep work, esp. none that required any kin of Suji to come out of the drawer... pasta with truffel oil, sage and dried tomatoes.

But it did saw some use on Saturday, when I used it to slice of the skin from two big salmon fillets and break them down into pieces fitting on our ovens baking trays. Did the job splendidly and had a chance later to test it on some Leberkäse...the crunchy brown crust on top of it was quite a challenge, but the blade length came in handy after breaking through the crust.

Not a knife that will see a ton of use in our amateur kitchen, but the price was too good to skip on. Didn't have a 270 suji either (only have a 210 ashi petty and a 240 JKI swedish stainles suji) and it will most likely save me from dabbling with a big Yanagiba, which would be way more of a drawer queen than that big Ashi will ever be...