One Touch Soroban (Abacus) [ON100]

This is an incredible bargain for the price. It is a completely handmade piece, signed and all, made out of natural wood materials. The resetting mechanism works flawlessly. It is hard to believe it doesn't cost twice as much. I had a Tomoe soroban in the past and I purchased this one for my 7-year-old daughter; I plan to practice with her and hopefully develop her skills and reach anzan levels (using a mental or imaginary soroban to make calculations). It comes with a very nice faux leather protective carrying case. The only sad thing is that I wish it came with the very cool and old fashioned looking instruction booklet I got for my other model (It was written in English originally in the 60's and never changed so it was the epitome of retro cool) but that's OK. Besides, there are plenty of resources online on how to use them. If you want to spend some time with your kids doing something really worthwhile you'll be hard pressed to find something better than a Tomoe soroban! UPDATE: My daughter (who is learning addition) took less than 1 minute to understand how the soroban worked. In fact, she was able to use it to check an answer to one of her homework math problems and found that the soroban was right but she had gotten it wrong previously. In other words, it is so intuitive a kid who had never used one before just understood it almost instantly. This should be required school equipment for all kids in the US.

Great quality.