Yeah, Japanese retail prices are often much higher than what you'd see in North America, and then there's import expenses and whatnot. Not to mention that typically, Japanese releases on DVD/Blu-ray have fewer episodes per disc than here (often 2 episodes per disc instead of 3 or 4), which means more discs to buy, which means more money changing hands. I certainly don't see a problem, though, because the visual quality is typically much, much higher than the hack jobs domestic releases would often get (in earlier days, anyway; the Japanese release would use the best master, the North American ones would have subpar copies given to them or they'd royally screw it up all by themselves).
Fans here sometimes complain about this as if domestic companies are switching over to it when they haven't (and when prices of domestic DVD releases are a half or a third of the price they would have been almost ten years ago...even the Blu-ray prices are cheaper than what DVDs went for ca. 2003). I sometimes wonder if the general wages in Japan are higher, which might allow for this...but then I get cynical and say they probably aren't any higher at all; the companies have just made milking customers' wallets a freakin' art form.
More on topic, I imported the Evangelion Renewal movie set a few years back because the domestic license holder (read: Manga Entertainment, or 'that company whose disc authoring quality could be bested by a blindfolded chimpanzee') weren't going to release them like ADV did with the Platinum edition of the TV series. Cost me $72, if I remember correctly (and $18 of that was shipping).
I honestly cringe at how much I'd have to spend to get the Blu-ray sets of all the series I want, especially as most of them aren't licensed (or the American companies don't seem to have plans for Blu-ray releases), so I'd have to import them.
