Im thinking about buying a PS3 from Japan and im wondering if im still able to connect to Australian servers to play with my mates, im also currently residing in Australia. Thank you for your response.
Even though the PS3 is region free, many patches and updates and downloads are region specific, not sure if online play is region specific too.
Personally I would suggest purchasing one in your region.
This will also mean that if your PS3 broke (unlikely - but possible) and it was from Japan your warranty would ask for the PS3 to be sent back to the country of purchase I believe.
Searching Google for this gives the general consensuses that games are region free, but some games will limit your online play to the region of the disc - is that any better?
Although all games are region free they often only connect to specific regions for online play; but that region depends on the game, not the console, so as long as you make sure you buy Australian versions of any games you want to play online the region of the console shouldn't make a difference.
Just to make sure you're aware though, backwards compatability is region specific so you won't be able to play any of your PS1 or PS2 games on your PS3 (unless you have Japanese originals) and afew PAL PS3 games are 50hz only for SDTVs and some NTSC PS3s don't support 50hz output (my HK NTSC PS3 does, my friends US NTSC PS3 doesn't) so that means there might be afew games you won't be able to play on an SDTV with your PS3 though I'm not sure if the Japanese model you order will support 50hz, or how you can find out.
