Map Camera Buying Center — Local services in Tokyo

Ignorant, arrogant, not suitable for international shoppers.

Overall terrible shopping experience for international shoppers

The fundamental question for Map Camera is: Japanese Laws

DO YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY from international shoppers who abide with Japanese laws OR do you want international shoppers to conform to your store's unspoken way of doing business which is NOT required by Japanese Laws?

Fact 1: only few assistants can communicate in English fluently, so there is a long queue to to get helped by the "few". Japanese Laws allow shopping in English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian etc. Fact 2: the "few" usually focus on only 1 customer at a time. But the Japanese Laws allow multi-tasking. Sometimes a simple question need 15-min long wait.

I stopped by Map Camera because rumors say the assistants have deep knowledge, but rumors are just romors.

To make international shoppers' experience much worse, some English speaking assistants lack of deep knowledge in photography, do NOT understand professional customers' requests, and laughed at the professional customers' requests due to their ignorance. All proved they are dis-repectful, ignorant, unprofessional, and arrogant.

Fact 3. I asked for manual focus macro RF lenses for special and advanced use cases, and the answer was Laughing! "Oh, we have lots of them" Fact 4. There are NOT a lot RF manual focus macro lenses in the world. That specific assistant really did not know what was...

One of the better second hand camera speciality shop place to visit in Tokyo. If you are a high end camera lover like me, the very fact that they have a Leica M10 and Fujifilm GFX 50s demo units out on display for anyone to test and play around makes the trek to Shinjuku worth the visit. They have quite a very good selection of second hand cameras and lenses. If you are diligent and know your market price you will spot some pretty good bargains.

Their floor area is not that big, even a little tight for me, but they are a multi floor store and separate their brands depending on the floor. For example most of their Leica and medium format gear is on the basement. Take note that in the area they have two locations in the same area. Which can be confusing. The first one is their store proper and the second one is their camera buying office where customers can sell their cameras. The store proper is right across of the relatively bigger Yodobashi...

Had terrible service when attempting to purchase a Sony mirrorless camera combined with a lens. The employees at the front desk were not helpful at all and were very impolite and inflexible. They mentioned that the purchase required a certain number to go with my provided paperwork, but as I went back to give the number they immediately turned me down saying I needed another paper to go ahead with the purchase which was impossible to obtain. Rather than just using provided number issued from the official government paperwork they decided that they would just completely deny the way for me to purchase the item. The staff lacked any flexibility or knowledge as they refused to seek upper management to confirm that the number would not be valid for the purchase. They seem to have a certain bias against foreigners as they had very poor customer service...