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I think the person to answer your questions best is Maksim, the owner of JNS.

As said above each stone is different. What is a typical Shobodani? They vary in hardness and speed so there is no way to define typical. In most general terms , there are soft, medium and hard...

Just get Suehiro Gokumyo 20k and be done with it.

You have the right attitude, start with the synthetics and learn to get good shaving edge from them. Then jump inot naturals, things are a lot less consistent there, and you need to have good basics...