September 8, 2002 - 11:58PM
Wes Ehrlichman

There's a problem! You know how I talked about how my camera was breaking every now and then and I couldn't take any pictures? Well I e-mailed Sony USA and they said, "I have no idea what that error message means. Why don't you call 888-449-7669." The answer to that is it's gotta be at least $1 a minute, even for an 800 number, and I KNOW I'll be put on hold for at least an hour trying to speak to an actual person who's just going to look it up in the computer and tell me that I need to call a different number. That's what happened when I tried to return something to them last year, so I'm assuming repairs will be the same. Man, if you want to buy something they're right there to help you, but if you need help with fixing something or with returning something you've got to work for it. Ok, I'm done with that rant. So why do I buy stuff from Sony anyways? Oh yeah, because it's really cool. And that's the point of this story...

On Sunday, since I hadn't yet been asked by a Japanese person to do anything I asked a couple of nearby ALTs to go to Sendai with me. Why Sendai? Doesn't that name sound familliar for some reason? Like it's a big Japanese city? Well, let me break it down for you. It isn't. Don't get me wrong, it's much bigger than Kedouin, and actually a lot bigger than Miyanojo. There's a bowling alley there, that is apparently the big attraction.

So me and Sue went to a TINY Japanese Sony store. All I have to say is wow. First of all, I've been to the Sony store in Chicago three or four times. There they've got all the latest American Sony Cameras, and all of the latest American Laptops, and even all of the latest Playstation games running on the latest American TVs. In Chicago they've got a few of those cool electronic dogs too. They're behind glass and in a stand, and when you walk by they occasionally bark. How cute.

The store we went to was about the size of the front window of the Chicago Sony store. Despite this, they had about twice the stuff, about three times the technology, and a way more hands-on feeling. Much like every store in Japan, this one was far from wheelchair accessable. Right in the middle of the tiny store were three chairs and a small coffee table where the store's employee, and most likely owner, would bring you (what else) coffee. Iced Coffee to be exact, and it was really good.

So on to the technology. I've got a few pictures that I'll throw out there. You'll probably going to want to click on them to make them bigger so that you can actually see what the store looks like. Just ignore the people in the front.

Ok. I lied. Don't ignore the people in the front. Doesn't this look exactly like every girl that's ever been in an electronics store? Ok. Now ignore the people in the front. Look just behind Sue's head.

http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/PCOM/PCG-U1/

Yeah. That tiny keyboard belongs to a 100% functional laptop. I didn't believe it at first, and I still almost don't believe its specs and how easy it is to use.

OS : Windows XP Home Edition
Processor : TM5800 867MHz
Memory: 256MB(128MB+128MB)* (8MB or 16MB video?)
Hard Disc: 20GB
Memory Stick: Magic Gate

Those specs aren't exactly amazing, but they are really good considering the laptop is AT LEAST 1/4th the size of mine in every direction.

If you decide to click on the link to Sony's site be sure to click on the Japanese text between "My Little Vaio" and "Gallery" at the bottom of the page for a little movie showing some features that rectify the issues of the small screen and keyboard.

If I was the richest man in the world I would have one.

I'd also like to direct your attention to the the little computer cart in the upper right of Sue's picture. In the cart are four AIBOs.

http://www.aibo.com

AIBO is Sony's robot dog. From my understanding, the AIBO is essentially a really cool virtual pet, but you can program it's AI to do different things. A couple are hanging out on their chargers and the other two are just watching people. This is a lot more fun than at the SONY store in Chicago, where they have one or two AIBOs total in the whole store, and they're behind glass. The ones in this store weren't exactly the most active, but I'm sure if I would have seemed interested in buying one the owner would have had one jump through hoops or chase its ball or something. At least I could actually touch them and sometimes they would look around.

Ok, now I'll switch focus to the other picture.

Check out that black widescreen TV looking thing behind the old Japanese man.

http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/Style-a/Product/W/

When I first glanced at it, it looked like a TV playing a DVD. But then I noticed the keyboard in the front that folded down. I checked the side of the monitor and noticed a DVD slot and the standard "Windows XP" and "Intel Processor" stickers. Apparently this is a mix between a TV and a desktop computer. You can watch TV or DVDs on it, but then you can bust out the keyboard to do computer stuff, and it looks inconspicuous in the middle of your living room. I don't know why anyone would need one of these things, but oh well.

When we got there the shop's owner was talking to this man about buying a digital camera. At least, I assumed so because he had a digital camera on the table in front of him.

http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/DSC/DSC-U10/

As me and Sue walked around the shop I noticed the pair of tiny blue and pink cameras that you can see the advertisement for in the picture. These cameras are about 1X2X3 inches big. When I picked up the blue one to try it out, she handed me the pink one instead because it actually had batteries in it.

I messed around with this for a little bit and then, since we were on the subject of cameras I told her that since I've come to Japan my digital camera had started to give me an error message. She asked to see it so I went back to the car, which was parked nearby, and took it back to the store.

When I showed her the message she quickly got on the phone with Sony and asked them what the message meant. It could just be because she was the owner of a Sony store, but compared to calling Sony in America this transaction went much faster. She was immediately talking to someone and after a few seconds she came back with my camera telling me it fixed itself.

This wasn't a surprise, because it works for me every once in a while too. I told her that whenever I see something cool and try to take a picture it doesn't work, but if it's something boring it always works. I proceded to turn it off and then on again, causing the error message to reappear. She got back on the phone to call Sony again.

I took my memory stick from her this time, put it into the tiny pink camera, and snapped a few pictures inside of the store. Those are the pictures I used in today's update. These really good pictures were taken with a camera that's about 1X2X3 inches big! They look just as good as the ones taken with mine! There was no zoom function on the smaller camera though.

While the saleslady was talking to the people at Sony, Sue sat and watched TV on the plasma HDTV in the corner. I looked at it now and then, but there was too much cool stuff around to just sit down and watch TV. The show that was on looked like one of those town plays that you sometimes see on TV in America when you're flipping through channels. In America they're always really grainy, with really bad camerawork, but this one was apparently filmed with an High Definition Camera of some sort because the picture looked amazing. The station identifier in the corner said BS Hi, which I'm guessing is the high definition version of my favorite Japanese channel BS 1.

When she came back she asked me for my address and telephone number, then she took my camera and told me that it would be fixed in around 10 days, and that she'd call when it was finished. I guess I'm going to have to drive back to Sendai in a little over a week and pick up my camera. The communication gap was pretty big too, so I'm not sure if it's going to cost me anything or not.

So that was the point of this whole entry. Was to explain that that's why I won't have any new pictures up for the next few weeks.

I'm really sorry if this journal entry sounded like a big ad, but it really wasn't. You'd have to be in Japan to buy any of this stuff anyways!