hiho!
jep! the one and only cleancut.se
-they have the akifusa oriental pm, a wide range of wakui, hinoura, yoshikane, the cheapest shiro kamos and other very nice stuff for very good prices .. for EU its without tax , you have to mail em and get a 200 kronen ups link for international shipping.
-japanmessershop.de from mr horie has some very high quality versions of knifes.. i once talked with him more than half an hour and he has very good knowledge of all other european sellers and knifes and especially jnats in general.
some stuff is lets call it older stock and some knifes are very unique that he has.. he also got very good jnats for awesome prices (i got a super unique maruyama from him for a super price and he has more stones for sale then he has listed on his site)
-the swiss source has prices for ashi but remember Switzerland is not EU and you get customs stuff on top!
They also got some pretty unique shiro kamo knifes.
ok since i am from germany i know a lot about the eu knife sellers (there are really not many of them) and i was so crazy that i checked them all in rotation for nearly a year when my knife addiction was at level "i need 2 knifes per month "
with 5 Ashis i was kind of the "Ashi advisor" in german forum and had infos directly from mitsuaki
.. (also very cool pictures, because i send him lots of pictures of cologne and he send me nice pictures of saeki .. and after a while i had the nickname "crazy daniel"
) )
also one thing about my ashis:
They are super light! my 210mm Gyuto is at 109 gramm and my big 260mm Kiritsuke is at 169 gramm.
Thats insanly light (ok both with ho wood handles)
well with ashi you cant go wrong and it was the favorite laser in germany until they stopped the direct orders and the yen rate dropped so crazy.
the stainless version has really easy maintenance and is very sharp out of the box.
ok i don't know how it compares to hap40 lasers, but if you order from the swiss guys its around 195 euros including shipping, but you must put your customs rate on top .. i also don't know where you are from but for germany it would be a whopping 19% + around 9%
seeya, daniel!