TheLeong.com

I got the new iPod “classic.” Some of you may remember from two summers ago when I bought the 30GB iPod from Costco, planning to one day take advantage of their liberal return policy in another scheme. And guess what, I did it, and it worked. 作戦大成功!

I suppose my old iPod worked all right, but it did freeze up a few times over the past year, so I felt it was valid to call Costco out on their guarantee. Also, the new iPod has much better stats, so I think the upgrade was a pretty good move. Since Costco has since (intelligently) revamped their return policy on major electronics to just 90 days, I no longer have a lifetime warranty. However, since Apple only comes out with new iPods about once every two or three years, I figure it was worth it while I was in town. I’m set until the next next iPod comes out and I’m tempted again to have the newest toy. The new 6th generation iPod that I have is 80GB compared to the old 30GB I had, and battery life is like double from before. The new interface is a lot more colorful, using album art and stuff, and the menus are overall just better organized. Thank you Costco for the free upgrade.

The return process was pretty simple. I put everything back in the original box and went to the service desk. They asked what was wrong with it, I said “Uh, I think the hard drive is corrupt or something,” and they called over their expert, which was a high school-age looking guy who I guess was in charge of their electronics department. As he inspected my iPod box to make sure everything was there, he dropped the iPod onto the concrete floor. “That sure isn’t going to help!” he said. Yeah ace. So either way I knew right there I was golden and would be getting a new iPod. They gave me all my money back, and I was able to go get the new model.

Oh, did I forget to mention that the price had dropped since my original purchase? So I returned my old iPod, got a brand spanking new one, and also made $50 out of the deal. Works for me.

Visit to St. Louis has been great so far. I’ve got to hang out with the fam a lot, ate a lot of good food, saw a lot of old friends, and did some scamming (I’ll post about that next). All in all an excellent vacation. I’m heading to LA tomorrow afternoon and will be there until the end of the week.

Before coming back for this trip, I had to bust out theold cell phone that I used in the US. I was worried when the phone wouldn’t even power on with the AC adapter plugged in, but after over a full day of charging, it was able to at least turn on. It’s always quite a shock going from using a Japanese phone (keitai) for a long time back to an American one, because of technology differences, standards, etc. In short, American phones are crap compared to ones in Japan for the most part. I am also going to include Blackberrys and anything that has a tiny QWERTY keyboard on it, because I think those just look ridiculous and can’t be justifiably functional. Just learn how to type using the numeric pad! It’s not like you’re going to be doing any two-handed touch typing with your oversized PDA phone. I think your average 14-year old Japanese kid can input a lot faster on a standard numeric pad than a businessman with a Blackberry QWERTY. I don’t even need T9 and I will dominate with a numeric pad. But I digress.

My American phone (right), which I bought in November 2005, is a Sony Ericsson Z520a. It has a 4x digital zoom VGA camera and a screen that is around 1.6×1.25″ (4×3 cm). In contrast, my Japanese phone (left) which I bought in September 2007, is also a Sony Ericsson, a W43S. It has a 2 Megapixel camera and a screen that is around 2.6×1.5″ (6.5×3.5 cm). Both phones have features like address book, calendar, alarms, text messaging, and of course calling. My Japanese phone can also browse the real internet, send real e-mails, has GPS navigation, is an IC-chip based train pass and digital wallet, TV remote, and music player. My American phone might actually be able to use a web browser, but it’s not very good or even fast and I think I’d have to pay more.

Here’s a look at the phones opened up:

So while yeah, my American phone does all the basic stuff, I feel a bit like I’m stepping back into the stone age. I never thought about how much time I killed in Japan browsing the web on my phone. One advantage that my US phone does have over the Japanese one is ease in making your own MP3 ringtones. With the US one, I could just use any file I want to. The Japanese one is a bit more protected and complicated, which kind of sucks.

Oh, and let’s also quickly look at the difference in pictures taken by the phones. I took a picture of my stupid bobblehead guy, using each phone’s maximum resolution. The difference is pretty obvious. It’s even more apparent if you look at the raw images. The Japanese phone is super tall because it can take wide photos. Raw Japanese. Raw American.

It’s too bad the US market will always be behind Japanese or other countries’ phone markets because people aren’t as willing to pay to upgrade their handsets as often or adopt new technologies. And yes, since I’ve had my Japanese W43s for over a year, I’m already thinking of buying a new model.

I meant to post these a few weeks ago when I first got it, but here are the very first two photos I ever took with my new digital camera (Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z1050). The first is of Goi Station from in front of my school’s building. The second is the big Sun Plaza building right next to the station. Click on the thumbnails to see the FULL pictures. They’re huge; 10 megapixels big. Around 3 megabytes each.

…and I’m looking forward to it more and more every time I think about it. Not that I have any specific plans over break, but I’m just looking forward to having 9 days of complete and utter freedom. I haven’t had a vacation like this since winter break, about 4 months ago, so it will be a welcome period of relaxation. Work seemed to go by fairly quickly on Tuesday, since in every class I can ask the students what their plans are for Golden Week, and could also think to myself about how I will have a whole week to sleep in, hang out, explore Tokyo, play video games, and sleep some more.

In other news, my mama-chari bike arrived last Thursday morning and it has been a nice addition to my arsenal. On Sunday the weather was great so I biked and shopped for around 5 or 6 hours. There is a surprising amount of stuff in Ichihara. I found some rice fields, a 24-hour McDonalds, about 5 video game shops, and even saw some random clothing shop called “Stock Market” that had a cigar store Indian standing in front of the building. Very random.

After several weeks of weekend research, and a rampage of comparing cameras this past week, I decided on a new digital camera to buy. Since I’ve had my current one since Freshman year of college, and it’s 3.3 megapixels, kind of bulky, and the buttons are starting to lose responsiveness, I figured it was about time to upgrade. I decided on the Casio Zoom EXLIM EX-Z1050, a 10.1 megapixel compact behemoth that should last me quite a long time. Kakaku.com, a Japanese price comparison site, actually found some really good deals but I decided to pay a little more for the reliability and safety of Amazon.co.jp. In the end I didn’t have to pay that much more, and the thing should arrive here by the weekend. I also found a high-speed 1GB SD card for around 2000 yen (like $17USD). I do miss Ben’s Bargains, but I’ll have to start exploring more Japanese websites for cheap buys. The new camera will be just in time to take pictures of my lazy adventures during Golden Week.

I feel like there was more I wanted to write about, but I need to get some sleep now. Golden Week soon!!!

Call it unnecessary. Call it compulsive. Call it way expensive. No matter what you call it, I gave in to the fad on Saturday. I went ahead and bought an iPod, those things that so many of you already have. I’d been thinking about getting one of these things for quite a while, a few years even. Up to now, my portable music solution was a MiniDisc player. Since some of you are probably thinking to yourself “what is a MiniDisc?,” it’s the format after CDs that was introduced to the US from Japan, but never really caught on here. They’re available, just I’ll bet you don’t have one in your house. Anyway, I went with that a few years back because I was able to get a good deal on eBay, and to be honest, it worked pretty good and served me well for a few years. It was nice because I could transfer MP3s to it from my computer, although since it was an American Sony model it couldn’t display Japanese text, and also I had to use the crappy Sony proprietary software. I used my MD player mainly for those long train commutes in Japan, etc. Here at school in the states, I didn’t really need a portable music player since I drive most places and/or just listen to music on my computer at home.

I figured since Japan’s mass-transit system, longer commute times, and lack of a car are sneaking back up on me very soon, it might be worth picking up a new music player. iPod time, right? But it’s so freaking expensive! Also the batteries gave lots of people problems, as apparent by the huge class-action lawsuit we all heard about. Regardless, I saw it at Best Buy last Thursday, and I didn’t realize how thin the current model actually is. Pretty sweet. So really, cost and the concern of the warranty or battery were the main things holding me back. As I tend to do before a major purchase like this, I thought about it back and forth in my mind, followed up by trying to dig up a lot of info online about reviews, prices. etc. I stumbled upon a pretty interesting bit of information about Costco, the large warehouse club store that is pretty much like Sam’s Club. St. Louis got a Costco about 4 years ago, so I had known what it was. Up to now, however, my main interaction with the chain was the Makuhari branch, where I once witnessed a Japanese man cover his pizza in every condiment available, including mayonnaise and chopped onions. I never really thought about buying a major electronic gizmo (or anything besides pizza and sushi) there. The thing about Costco that I found out was that they offer a 100% guarantee on everything they sell, with the exception of computers which only have 6 months. But still, everything?! Including iPods! This means, according to what I read, that I could probably buy an iPod there, and if there were any problems or if I decided I just didn’t want it, I could take it back with the receipt and return it very easily. Or better yet, take it back in a few years when the current 5th generation iPods are obsolete and exchange it for a shiny new model. Sound a bit too good to be true? Apparently a lot of people are doing that with a much more expensive item, HD TVs. Cnet has a good article about this (link).

I decided that this would probably be worth it. Worse comes to worse, I try it out for a bit and if I don’t like it, I can take it back after the Japan trip in August and get my money back. I called Costco to make sure they had iPods in stock, and they did. The guy on the phone said he wasn’t allowed to quote prices on the phone, but the nearest electronics store down the road sells them for 10 dollars more, plus at Costco you have a lifetime guarantee. Bingo. He said the magic words. Went to Costco with my dad, who has a membership card (note: me and Seth both used my dad’s old Costco card for over a year in Japan). I got the 30GB black iPod with video (I think they all have video now), and I do have to say, it is a sweet piece of machine. I even double-checked with the cashier girl, who confirmed that everything in the store but computers have a lifetime guarantee. Even the other employee who was helping her check out didn’t know about this policy. The 100% guarantee even works on car batteries! I don’t understand that, because it seems too good to be true, but apparently that’s how they do business. They must keep it kind of hush-hush too, if an employee didn’t even know about it.

I was reading online that Costco sets up agreements with the manufacturers to let them send back old stuff, which makes sense because otherwise Costco would have gone out of business a long time ago with this policy. But anyway, the iPod cost me $289.99 before tax, which is cheaper than Best Buy and even the Apple online store. Expensive as balls, but with this whole lifetime guarantee thing not so bad I guess. I can have the newest iPod forever! I can bring this thing back whenever I want! Keep in mind that at Best Buy, you can purchase the optional extended warranty, which costs $60 and is only good for 3 years. I’ll take the lifetime option for -$10, thank you very much.

The iPod is pretty sweet. It’s very slim and shiny black and silver, although fingerprints and stuff show up really easily. It comes with the trademark white iPod earbuds, which I won’t be using because I don’t want to necessarily look like an iPod owner when I’m outside, although Japan doesn’t have the mugging problem that New York did (article). Also I’d rather use my Sony earbuds, which are better sounding and are black to match the player. The thing, obviously, syncs up perfectly with iTunes, and I was able to put all of my music on there with just a few clicks. Disappointingly, I also realized that I only have just over 10 gigs of music on my computer. I thought for sure I had more. Thank god I don’t pay for music. I mean….I buy CDs all the time… uhh.. Video encoding is pretty easy with this Videora program I read about on Lifehacker (link), and it looks pretty sweet on the glossy screen of the iPod. Battery life for watching video is about 2.5 hours apparently, in comparison to the 13 hours you get when just listening to music, so I’ll most likely just use this thing for music when I’m on planes or trains in Japan. Having the video and photo ability is pretty nice though, and if nothing else it will give me stuff to show off to people.

This entry has gotten way longer than I planned. I’m going to go watch more of Frasier season 8 and get to sleep. Japan in about 22 days!

Overall the trip back home to St. Louis has been productive. And by productive, I mean a good amount of playing video games, sleeping, watching TV, and reading. It’s been a lot of the same stuff I would be doing back in Indiana, except I don’t have to make or buy food, and I don’t really leave the house that much here. I should probably get on that this week, since there are a good number of people in town that I should hang out with.

My parents are pretty into video games, but only of the puzzle variety. When I got home, the Super Nintendo was brought up from the basement and sitting in the living room, all set up to play Kirby’s Avalanche, which is pretty much the same as Puyo Puyo, but with Kirby characters instead of the weird Japanese monsters. I’ve also been playing a good amount of Puzzle Fighter on Playstation with the fam, which is an awesome game except for the slight problem that I am a bit colorblind (or something), and can’t tell the difference between the green and yellow jewels that well. Either way, I am able to destroy my parents and I’m working more and more on regularly beating my younger brother Joe. Both my mom and dad only play as Sakura on Puzzle Fighter, since they say she’s cute. They of course don’t know any Japanese either, so all the things that the characters say when you’re playing get misinterpreted into something weird. They’re convinced that “Hadouken” is “Hello Garrett.” Haha.

Speaking of video games, I cracked this afternoon and decided to purchase a DS Lite. After the fact, I have to say that it is a beautiful system, and I’m glad I bought it. I didn’t have a regular DS, so it was about time to buy one. This of course is all part of how I am justifying dropping $130 on another toy. There’s also some kind of massive Pokemon game coming out in the future (Diamond?), which I would most likely want to play pretty bad, so I figure might as well buy one now, and enjoy it in the meantime. There are a good number of other games that I want to play, or would want to play later, so I guess this isn’t a complete waste of money. I also realized that for how much I play video games, I haven’t really purchased any games or systems for the past year and a half (thanks to modern technology, haha), so this isn’t so bad. Yes, I am over justifying this, but oh well. It’s a fine system and a lot of fun; I’d recommend it to anyone who likes sweet stuff.

Luckily, I was browsing online this morning before I went out to buy the DS Lite. Kotaku posted an article that had coupons to get a free copy of Brain Age along with the DS Lite, so that’s like a bonus $20 there since I was planning on buying Brain Age anyway. Oh, and if you’re going to buy a DS Lite, here are the coupons (Best Buy and Circuit City). I also went ahead and bought the New Super Mario Bros, and it is a great game. I went to Circuit City first, since they also had a deal in their weekly ad to get a free carrying case or something, but they were out of Brain Age so I went to Best Buy instead. There were a lot more DS Lites than I would have thought (there were at least 15 still on the shelves), so maybe the predictions of DS Lite being sold out on release day were pretty off.

I haven’t been completely (only mostly) unproductive this trip home. I interviewed with a company here in St. Louis last Thursday, for the prospect of getting a summer internship/job doing some market research and stuff. The company is looking to start distributing their products in Japan, so they need someone to start doing research and translating online, then possibly heading over there later this summer to do some first-hand research and looking for distributors, etc. Free trip to Japan, plus the possibility of getting paid? Hell yes. Sounds like I might actually have a “summer job” now, so get off my back about being so lazy. I’ll find out the details and everything for sure tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have it though, so I’ll likely do it.

Back to Bloomington probably Friday, give or take a day or two (yes I realize that is a very vague estimate).