the tall blond guy goes to japan

My pilgrimage

Mecca

Sony. The very word gets me excited. Now I even know how to write it in Japanese. Ooooh.

I'd buy anything Sony. My digital camera is a Sony. My TV at home is a Sony. So is my stereo, my CD player and my alarm clock. I want to be a digital dream kid. Tee hee!

Before I got here, I found something labelled "Sony Building" on the map. The excitementl started to rise, and I put it on my mental lit of must-see things here in Tokyo. For the first little, seeing some of the neato things in Akihabara made seeing what's in the Sony Building less of a concern. But today, as I realized time in this city is running short, I decided to wander through the place. Ooooh nice.

Sony showroom

Nice place they've got here. It's in the Ginza area, near the subway station. In fact, one of the exits of the subway goes right up into it. They've got all kinds of really cool stuff, including things that have yet to hit the shelves in North America. For example, MD (MiniDisc) seems to be big here, so there are lots and lots of things based on that technology. There's even a digital camera that saves to MDs. Very cool. Some amazing Hi8 cameras and a crop of brand-new very impressive DV (digital video tape) cameras. Drool drool.

One of the unfortunate things about the cool stuff in Japan is that they tend to work only in Japan. For example, HDTV. This is a very cool high-definition television standard. TV has never looked this good. It's like comparing a poorly-generated digital camera image next to a 35mm photograph. And it's widescreen- like film.

Sony hi-vision yeah!

If you've never seen HDTV, you don't know how lousy regular TV is. Unfortunately, mostly due to the US government dragging their feet on certification, this standard has yet to see the light of day on the other side of the Pacific.

The really cool thing about this TV in particular is the slight curvature of the screen. Rather then being convex, with the middle of the screen slightly more forward than the rest, this set is concave- the middle is actually pressed into the set. Wow.

The other really cool Japan thing that won't work at home are these car-navigation computers.

GPS in the car

They use the the Global Positioning System (GPS) to always know where in the world you are. While this system is available just about everywhere (it's satellite-based), the system requires data about the city (stored on - shudder - DVD). North American cities are not yet available, as far as I can understand. It shows maps, pictures, directions- right down to outlines of buildings. It interfaces with CD players, MD players (there's that MD again), radio stations, portable cellphones. It can also pick up television signals. But that's not all- it can also do wireless Internet browsing. To me, that's almost worth moving to Japan and getting a car. Cooooooool.

But it won't work at home.