SNESerious Business.

So I’ve been having a ton of midterms lately, and one night me and some friends just HAD to find something to do after studying to get our brains functioning normally again. I picked up SNES emulation again. I thought I was going to pass all my classes/midterms.

Here’s what happened:

An SNES controller for PC that I found in Shinjuku. Also from the same people that make the keyboard and mouse combo I am using...

If you don’t understand what this means, you are either too young or not old enough. Yeah, they mean the same thing, though there is the possibility that you could be too old too…

Well, looks like I won’t be posting for a while. Just wanted to let you all know where I’ll be for the next 6 months. Someone alert my family and friends.

JStuff Feature: A Little Tech

So for the second JStuff feature, I’ll be showing off some of the technology I’ve acquired while I’ve been in Japan. Some of it is pretty basic, and some aren’t. Though I haven’t even started to scrape the surface of Japan’s tech culture, I think some of the things I’ve gotten so far are pretty sweet. Sometimes I think maybe I should just start buying stuff here and selling it in the states for profit…

Exactly what it looks like. That is a portable spoon.

Why in the world would I feature a portable spoon? I featured it because I support this idea, that we should take cutlery anywhere so that we can be ready to eat a meal at any time. Long be the day from me that I am offered food but no means to eat it. I can only imagine the agony such a situation would cause. So, I bought myself a handy portable spoon, that is probably only meant to feed babies or asians, I guess, because it’s just so damn small. I guess I can just eat 1/4 a bite at a time.

A wireless keyboard and mouse combo I got while here in Japan

So here’s a wireless keyboard and mouse combo I got here in japan. Why is this up here? It cost me around $48. And that’s including the exchange rate. I though that was a good price for stuff that works, and though I don’t know what in the world Buffalo, or whether their company is any good, I know that it works (mostly because I’m typing on it right now, and haven’t had any problems with it so far). Hurray for manufacturers in China!

A watch I bought for myself while in Japan. Very stylish.

So here’s a watch I bought for myself while I was in Japan. The watch is awesome, and it works very well, and I get a lot of compliments on it. A European friend of mine actually helped me pick it out (I was going for an all green one).

SIDE NOTE – Everything in Japan is EXPENSIVE. OK, maybe just Tokyo. But it is EXPENSIVE. This watch was 30+ dollars, and that was “cheap”. A friend of mine has a funky looking analog watch that he paid over $100 for. And he thought that was a deal. Beware, Japan is an expensive place…

And another thing that makes absolutely no sense here: Rice is expensive. 5kg sells for about $20. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I’m pretty damn sure in America, $20 could buy you one of those bags they throw off planes into refugee areas in Africa. You would think that rice would be cheap in a country where everyone eats it. Go figure. Oh and before someone tries to explain economics to me, about supply and demand, please remember that the supply of rice is NOT small. Theres no way demand would push the price up that much for no good reason. But I digress.

A Japanese Cell Phone. 100MB storage included, able to send emails from the phone without internet plans.... This thing is amazing, and this is the cheapest prepaid one.

OK, possibly the biggest part of this tech feature is the cell phone I got in Japan. As may be expected, Japanese cell phones are definitely a cut above America’s. First of all, they can send emails, and receive emails, from a picked email address, for no charge (as in, no internet “subscription” or extra fee). I bought a prepaid, so my phone is pretty basic, but if I had paid about $40 more for my phone, I would have gotten a phone that could watch streaming TV anywhere, also for free. FREE. AT&T would calculate how much TV you’ve watched, and charge you handsomely, but here, it’s FREE. Though, Japanese TV is probably the biggest downfall of the entire society, though it is entertaining at times. But maybe I’ll say more on that later.

So, back to the cellphone. Another feature that I thought was really amazing, but others might already have (especially in Europe) is the ability to send things over infrared. These phones almost all come with infrared ports, and you can send things like contact data over infrared to someone who is holding their phone close. This, I thought was really convenient, since the only way to add people (other than bluetooth) in America was manually. I guess America just skipped infrared and went straight to bluetooth.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for this little feature. Though I’m broke-ish right now, I’m sure once I’ve stated working, I’ll be fully prepared to buy up all this country’s technology. A friend of mine is also thinking of building a desktop for super cheap while he’s here…. Maybe I’ll do the same.

First JStuff Feature: Pocari Sweat

I thought I’d start a section/category for all the stuff that I come across that’s cool/interesting/new/possibly unknown/important.

I’ll call it the JStuff Feature category, from now on.

The inaugural feature is going to be a drink I found in japan, called Pocari sweat.

Pocari Sweat. The greatest tasting sweat on earth.

Essentially, the drink is like Gatorade, without the flavoring. And it is GOOD. It’s almost addictive. I mean it, as I was drinking it, I found it hard to stop. They might as well have put some hard drugs in it, because it had an uncanny never-have-enough sort of taste (kind of like apple juice, which there never seems to be enough of).

I dunno what in the world a Pocari is, but it’s sweat is delicious. I wish I could catch one of these magical creatures and just make it sweat all day. Maybe I’ll run into one someday.

Hope you enjoyed the first JStuff feature, maybe when the internet becomes taste sensitive, I’ll upload a sample, but for now, you’ll have to just go by my word I guess.