For the most part I think any of the Japanese vendors at Amazon are fine to purchase an F807 from (just make sure they have the blue player in stock in 64gb) so long as they have a good positive feedback score.I purchased mine from a vendor named 'Bluesky Japan' and have spoken with other members on the forum here who have purchased their F807's from the vendors 'Japan Select' and 'Export-from-Kobe' on Amazon, and they also had positive experiences.
It takes from between 7-10 days to receive your F807 if you use EMS (expedited shipping) and between 10-21 days if You choose standard shipping . I have yet to use Media Go ,though from reading through the forums here it seems that yes it does work fine with the Japanese F807 (as well as the F805 & F806 models). as for playing FLAC files I haven't had any trouble whatsoever with displaying album art no matter whether using Sony's native player or third party apps like Winamp,Neutron,Poweramp,Android Equalizer Player or any other.though I generally tag all my own files using Mp3Tag which (despite its name) can tag just about any file type (FLAC,APE,Ogg,Mp3,M4a etc).
also some great advice I got from forum member Dr.Sheep and which everyone who orders a Sony F series Walkman from Japan should know is how to change the default language to English when You get your player.it's fairly simple
1.charge the player up and power it on then off to trigger the language select screen, so you can change it back to English.
2. after that go into keyboard setup and change back to English keyboard instead of Japanese IEM.
3.run update to bring it up to 1.11
and that is it.
Also,I wanted to ask your opinion, since You own both an F series Walkman and an X series Walkman. You said the F series has more refined detail and sounds more balanced than the X series player,but I wondered how the bass compared between the F series and the X series to your ears? - as I understand it from speaking with others who either own or have been able to compare both of them, the X series seem to have a very different and much more prominent bass sound than the F series (at least using the native Sony player and EQ). and I am considering ordering the 64gb model of the X series so I would like to know before hand.mind You my main concern is sound,I don't so much care about screen size or the Android capabilities as much (though they are nice to have), I'm just wondering before shelling out $400 if the X series would be better for Techno,IDM,Minimal Electronica etc (i.e. artists like Donnacha Costello,Aphex Twin,Plastikman,Chemical Brothers etc.).I am also seriously considering the iBasso DX50 which is only $239 and has 8gb on board with the capability to expand up to 2tb using micro sd cards (when they become available in that size,for now a 64gb card is plenty imo)
I have a smaller 16gb Sony NWZ-E345 Walkman I purchased back in May of 2010 which I still use and to me it has a much punchier/stronger bass sound than the F807 but a very different sound signature over all,and don't get me wrong I absolutely LOVE both players and they each have their own strengths ,but for my tastes I prefer a deeper/punchier and more prominent bass sound which the NWZ-E345 has (whether all the E series players share the same sound signature I can't say as this is the only model I have ever owned).
as for where to find the NW-F807 in blue on Amazon here is a link.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B009JXJKM8/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new
