"I also live in Japan.
While I would agree with Carlos' account of pre-iMac Japan and second his call for a Japanese online store and Pink iMac, 'Hello Kitty!', I would have to disagree with his assessment of the current status of iMac sales based on my anecdotal experience here in Kyoto.
Filling the huge gap left by the death of the Performa the iMac exploded onto the Japanese scene in early September. By chance I returned to Japan from a trip abroad on the same day as the Japanese release and shared a train with a Japanese guy who was proudly displaying his new iMac while at the same time seeming a bit wary that one of its admirers might try to snatch it from him.
I soon made my first visit to a Japanese Mac shop to see how things were going. As I approached I was passed by several earnest Japanese, mostly female, at somewhere between a trot and a gallop whose serious expressions were replaced by joyous giggles when they saw that the little Bondi boys were indeed in stock. The feeling at the store was more like at a game center as people jostled happily to get a look and possibly a touch. Especially encouraging were the numbers of girls and older folks not common in these stores and the fact that the whole store was being perused. This seemed like 'The Place' to be that day.
Since that time I have regularly visited Mac venues in town to check on things. From the beginning most of the local computer stores which carried Macs have featured iMacs at the front of their stores. This is a most welcome change especially at the stores which before had kept an ever dwindling sample of Mac stuff at the very back of the store. More impressive was that the iMac display invariably set upon and was surrounded by boxes of the little fellows labeled with their new owner's name awaiting delivery. We're talking like upwards of twenty units! A formidable display of enthusiasm for the potential buyer. Since that time most of the stores selling Mac stuff which had not been able to sell the iMac, for what ever reason, are now featuring the rainbow of iMacs as per the stores above, what's more in some of these stores display space for other products is now being utilized to keep an ample supply of iMacs on hand (hopefully not channel stuffing)!
Under Canon Mac prices were almost completely uniform. No matter what store you went you were handed Canon's price list. Besides computer stores the only place a Mac could be found was in the electronics section of discount shops where occasionally the cry of 'Pa-fo-ma!' could be heard from the POP CD in the lonely Performa tucked in some quiet corner of the store. To my knowledge there are no Shimamura Music Co. stores in Kyoto as the market is controlled by a local company, Jeugia, and they are not selling iMacs.
Thus to me the current regime seems rather good, prices are free to float and iMacs are being featured in all of the best computer stores in town and additionally in other places in towns where Shimamura does business. Possibly 'Yamada Denki' and 'Besk Deni' might offer interesting alternatives or additions especially in the countryside where the first stores similar in scale to American super stores have been built and the 'store within a store' concept would work but this is not true in cities where stores are much smaller.
While my views are based strictly upon my personal urban experience, the 120,000 iMacs that were reportedly sold in four months would mean that in that short time approximately 1 out of 100 Japanese bought an iMac!"