Studio Toriumi
Racquets go to about half price one model behind, and the performance gap between two generations is smaller than the gap in your own play. But the item that really drives annual spend is strings, not racquets. Prices change every month; buying strategy does not. This page only covers the second.
Read the guide JAManufacturers refresh roughly every two years, and the previous model is cleared out the moment the new one lands. Grip size is the one thing not to compromise on. Beginners in particular do worse with expensive frames: advanced racquets are smaller, heavier and stiffer.
Strings lose tension from the moment they are strung, roughly 5–10% in the first month, so they degrade even without breaking. The page includes a calculator comparing single packs against buying a reel, and telling you whether a stringing machine would pay for itself.
Overgrips cost 200–400 yen individually but around 100 yen in packs of 30. For practice, pressureless balls bought by the box cost a fraction per ball, because they do not go flat.
Omni/clay soles wear out in a handful of sessions on hard courts. Getting this wrong costs more than any discount saves.
Lacoste began as competition wear designed by a tennis player, and its discontinued lines discount heavily — but functionally, any moisture-wicking polo does the job. Avoid 100% cotton. The page says plainly that clothing does not improve your game.
Prices move daily. Any specific figure would be wrong by the time you read it. So the page gives the priority order for what to buy cheaply, and leaves the number to you.
The guide is in Japanese. The interactive string-cost calculator works regardless of language, and the product links are Amazon Japan search links.
We don't machine-translate pages and publish them as if they were written in English. When an English edition exists, it has been written in English. Until then, this page tells you honestly what is on the other side of the link.
Everything on this site is free and has no paywall, in either language.