What happened to Logitech Z623 speakers

Remember that I had the Logitech Z623 speaker set when I was in Japan. Do you want to know what happened to them? Its fate was decided the same way I decided the fate of a lot of hardware, whenever I wanted to upgrade: Auction!

Bringing them along with me to Sri Lanka was not feasible for the following reasons.

• It was huge and heavy. There was no way I could have brought it back with me without using sea cargo. We decided not to use sea cargo, because it was cheaper to replace everything with new items than to ship used parts, especially considering the complexities that would arise early this year, which you will learn in the near future I suppose.
• The speakers only supported 100V power from the mains. I could have used a step down transformer, but it is not an elegant solution. It adds more cost.
• It has that issue with the power button. The culprit appears to be the inconsistent contact between the leads in the power switch. Sadly, access to the power switch is difficult, but I am sure I would be able to fix it with the help of my dad. Still, there was a little doubt that it would completely resolve the issue.
• This was I get to try out something new in the coming months. I hate rotting with the same gear for too long. This was that opportunity to upgrade.

I had it listed up on

Rakuten Auction for a while, but nobody wanted to buy it.Perhaps, Japanese people are more interested in smaller, Japanese made speakers. So I had to drop the price all the way down to JPY 2,500 but I made the buyer pay for shipping. Finally someone placed a bit. I had made up my mind to give it away to a friend, if nobody wanted to bid for it. Luckily, I didn't have to go there.

The sad thing is though, the speakers are very good and strong. And it would cost a fortune to own those speakers in Sri Lanka. In fact, the prices of it in Japan has also gone up by 50% or so since I bought it. It could be due to the drop of value of Japanese currency, but it is quite an old product. I had it for 3 years too.

Do you think that I have upgraded my PC too often in the last 5 years?

I had an idea in the morning. I wanted to know all the PC parts that I have bought during the 5 and a half years I have lived in Japan. I think I have spent a lot of money on the PC!!!

But hey, it is my hobby and just because one might feel that it is a total waste of money, it is called life. And I have sold everything that I do not use, albeit at a much lower price than I bought. I think I probably have wasted like JPY 200,000 if you calculate the deficit between the total amount I have spent on buying these items and the total amount I have sold them for.

There are two ways you can go about buying a PC. Either spend a fortune and get something that might last 3 or 4 years without any trouble. Or buy something spending half that price and keep upgrading the components every year and selling the old components. If you keep the total cost the same, you would definitely have a much faster, efficient and capable system in 4 years than the high-end system you would otherwise have built 4 years ago. I follow the second path.

Anyways, here is the list I came up with.

CPU

1. Intel Core i5 750
2. Intel Core i7 2600K
3. Intel Core i7 4770K
4. Intel Core i7 4790K x3 (Yes, I bought three of them and settled with one)

Motherboard

1. Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3
2. ASRock Z68 Extreme 4
3. Asus Maximus VII Hero
4. Asus Maximus VII Gene
5. Asus Z97i Plus - current

Smarket gave me more than their estimate for the iPhones

In a previous post I mentioned that I found a shop called Smarket to sell my iPhones. The sent a delivery man to my apartment to pick up the phones, free of charge. I received an email after a couple of days (on Monday) saying that the phones arrived at their shop safely. They also mentioned that it might take up to 2 weeks for them to conclude the assessment due to extremely high popularity with their service. I did not really care as long as I received the same amount of money or as close to their original estimate, and that I received them before I left Japan.

On Thursday, I received another email from them saying that there was a little issue with the documentation I provided as proof regarding my name, age and address. I sent copies of the front side of the Insurance card and an electricity bill. They had asked for a copy of the back side of the card as well. There is not much on that side other than an address column which has to be filled by the owner of the card. I had written the address by hand, but they said it is fine. Since I didn't want to delay their work any longer, I faxed them what they wanted within an hour. Just to be safe, I also faxed my Residence card. I had to pay JPY 50 to send the fax from the Family Mart near the office. I could have used snail mail too, but it is actually more expensive than sending a fax. This is actually my 3rd time sending a fax - ever. (This is the first one, and the second one was sent from the office)

They emailed me saying that they received the fax, but sadly that they could only assess it the next day because it was late.

Catching a Nambu line express train from Nakanoshima

The name of the railway line that goes through the closest railway station to our apartment in Japan is called Nambu line. The station is Nakanoshima. Nambu line is operated by JR.

Couple of years ago, JR started an express train service on the Nambu line. What's meant by express in this case is that the trains skip the less important stations and ultimately shave off few minutes as a result. They did it without expanding the stations and simply exploited the larger time gaps between each train during the day time. In other words, the express train service isn't available during rush hour where the time gap between trains is short. Still, they have to time it so that the express trains can overtake the slower, regular ones at stations that has the facility to switch tracks (there are only a handful of stations with the capability on the Nambu line). This isn't that hard especially on the Nambu line which doesn't branch into multiple lines and because the trains are punctual.

Being a heavy residential area, Nakanoshima was originally chosen as a station where express trains halted. However, after few months, for whatever reason, they removed Nakanoshima from the list of such stations. Now we have to watch in awe when the express trains whistle past us when we are waiting to hop onto a train.

But all isn't lost. If you are lucky, there is still a way you can hop onto an express train. If there is a train travelling in the opposite direction that is approaching the station soon after you missed a regular train (or if you deliberately missed it to do the following trick), you can board it, go one station (which has to be a station where express trains stop - and in the case of Nakanoshima, both stations before and after it are stations where express trains halt), get off and hopefully get aboard the express train going in the direction you originally wanted to travel. (The good thing is, it won’t cost you any additional charges. In Japan, the charge it calculated as the lowest between two gates where you either insert the ticket in or you touch the Suica card on. There is usually no need to go through a gate when switching the directions.)

We managed to put this trick into test recently.

Getting rid of the two iPhone 6’s which are SIM locked to AU

Now that I have terminated the AU connections, it is time to sell the iPhones. I checked the offerings on my favourite sites few weeks ago, namely Sofmap and Dospara. Sadly they were offering only JPY 30,000 per phone. It was possible to get JPY 34,500 from Sofmap if I sold it for points, but I had no use for the points at this time and there won't be enough time to use them.

So I turned to my trusty auction site: Rakuten Auction. I checked the prices other people were selling the same phone and they were listing them for JPY 45,000-ish starting bid. Nobody had bid for those phones though. I set JPY 44,000 as the starting bid for my phones. This was about a week before terminating the AU connections. Nobody bid for it and when October 31 drew nearer, I reduced the starting bid all the way down to JPY 38,000. Then someone asked for the IMEI number of the Gold model saying that he would like to buy it. With the IMEI number they can check is the phone had any network restrictions with AU. Our phones had no restrictions except that they had to be used on the AU network. But I read that it is dangerous to give out the IMEI numbers to others so I was a bit worried about it. But just then, I found a shop that would give JPY 36,000 for the Gold model and JPT 35,000 for the Space Grey model. Considering the overheads and delivery charges (as I listed the phones as free delivery) involved with the auction, I decided to sell the phones to this shop. So I withdrew the listing from Rakuten Auctions.

However, the shop was not that great either. I emailed them confirming the prices and I never received a reply from them. I could of course call them but I didn't have to do that because they have a email system. I could have visited their shop but since their working hours are very short (10am to 7pm on weekdays, 11am to 6pm on Saturdays, 12am to 6pm on Holidays), I would not be able to make it to their shop and finish the trade if I leave after work. Yesterday was a holiday and I was thinking of visiting their shop. My wife wasn't very happy about it; she wants to sell the phones, but also wants to be with me but then again don't want to pay for the train tickets to visit the shop. This made me reluctant to visit the shop as well. If I received the darn reply from them, it would have been OK because I could have simply sent them the phones and they would assess it and send me the money.

Ordered my Mineo SIM, my first MNVO connection

This is a long post.

It is confirmed: I'm finally leaving Japan for good in December. That means, I have to terminate my mobile phone contracts. Since I'll be terminating the contract earlier than 2 years, I have to pay the early termination fee. There is no escape from this. If you somehow avoid paying this (by letting the connection get terminated by not paying the bills for example), there is the risk of litigation. Since they have a copy of my passport, there is no way to hide. At least there is no "very early termination" penalty imposed by AU, at least not for my contract.

So I looked at my options of how to recover or at least minimize this cost. I, of course, will be selling the iPhones before I leave because they are locked to AU, but that plan was there from the beginning. So I wanted more than that. I checked if there were any connections where I could switch to and then terminate  but still recover the cost of early termination and other overheads by selling the phones. There weren't any! Apparently the mobile phone companies have come to senses.  They all ask for a huge penalty when terminating the phone within the first year, if they initially charged a discounted price for the phones. This penalty is much larger than the price I can make by selling the phones.

It was possible to change to a cheaper plan from AU than the one I was using. But there is one problem. I wanted to sell the phones before I leave Japan, obviously, but then I would not have a phone that would work with an AU SIM (the Nexus 5 doesn't work with the AU SIM) until I leave Japan. Even if the Nexus supported the AU SIM, I would have to terminate the connections on the previous day the latest. That is not a safe thing to do because I would need the phone to check the transit information and map on the day of the departure. And it would be difficult to sell the phones on the day before we leave Japan. There is loads of work to do: packing and cleaning etc. Not to mention, it will be the winter too.

Nexus 5X in Japan is expensive and carrier locked!!!

Android Authority wrote an article about how expensive the Nexus 5X in Japan is, even when bought directly from Google Store. But the high price is only one part of how much messed up Nexus 5X in Japan is. It is not even unlocked! A Nexus phone that is not unlocked must be never heard of.

Last week I paid a visit to the Biccamera to see if there were any nice deals on phones. The usual “iPhone 6 for free” deals were available, but the catch is that unless you use it for more than a year, you will have to pay a hefty penalty. I won’t be in Japan for another whole year so I gave up the idea. No new phone for me then.

But I didn't want to waste my trip, so I looked a round for new gadgets. There was the Nexus 5X on display and I was amazed by the price you would have to pay upfront. That cost will be massively discounted over the course of two years if you use MNP, but let's be realistic now. Who wants to use the same phone for 2 years? Well, I don't. So if you are switching carriers at mid point, you'll have to pay them back half of that hefty price. That comes about 80% to the value of a brand new Nexus 5X from Google Store. And you definitely don’t want to buy it with a new connection because then the phone will not be discounted. You will be paying a massive JPY 80,000 plus amount for the phone alone (for the 32GB model).

When I bought the Nexus 5, one of the things that made it my obvious choice was that it wasn't locked to any carrier. I have confirmed that it is truly unlocked because I could use a Telstra prepaid SIM in it on our trip to Australia early this month. I'm not sure why they have locked the Nexus 5X to The carrier especially when the price of the phone is massively inflated. This doesn't make sense because people won't buy it from Y-Mobile and switch to another carrier. If the phone was free or hugely subsidized (more than any penalties that you would have to pay for early termination of contract) then people would do this. But not with all these conditions. I don't even understand how they managed to get Google to go along with this stupid idea in the first place. Yes, you can get it unlocked after 6 months but you can get the iPhone 6S for the same price and it can be unlocked after 6 months too. There is no competition between the iPhone 6S and the Nexus 5X.

This is definitely a ploy by the carriers to trap customers in a 2 year plan. They should understand that more and more people are moving to MVNOs because they are much cheaper and do not lock you to a 2 year plan. MVNOs are more applicable in an age like this where circuit calls are not necessary. There are million VoIP clients which are much cheaper than the absurd circuit switched mobile call prices in Japan. 

Edit:

You can buy the Nexus 6P, which is vastly superior to the Nexus 5X from the Google Store for JPY74,000 which is cheaper than buying the Nexus 5X from Y-Mobile. I don't know whether to laugh or cry now.  (Still you'll be paying about JPY10,000 more than the US price for it. Wonder if Expansys will be able to bring down these phones at a reasonable price. It is still unavailable as of writing this post.)

Finally passed JLPT N2

Good news. I finally managed to pass the N2  of Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). This was my second attempt. The first attempt went down horribly. This was also my last shot at it, so I am glad I could pass it.

The exam has several sections, namely  Language Knowledge, Reading and Listening. We have to get 19/60 for every part at least to pass the exam. 57/180 doesn’t look that hard but you actually have to score 90/180 a well. The last time I only managed 79/180 and the biggest contributor to the failure was the reading part. I am too slow at reading Although I had the required marks for the Language Knowledge section, I had a bad start to the exam with not knowing answers to first five questions. To be honest, I didn’t study much the first time. I thought the Japanese knowledge that I have gained by working in Japan amongst Japanese people was enough to pass the exam. Obviously I was wrong.

So this time I studied a bit more. The biggest issue I had was that I could not find a proper syllabus for N2. So how did I study? I didn’t buy any books and definitely didn’t attend any classes.

Automated point of sale counters at the G.U. store

According to my wife, G.U. is the only place to buy decent quality clothes at a reasonable price in Japan. Last Saturday, we paid a visit to the G.U. store in Kawasaki. That's the one in the Dice building.

I hate shopping especially for clothes, so I took the kid for a walk around different floors in the Dice building. Once my wife had finished shopping, she called me back and asked me to pay for the clothes.

When I went to the area where the counters usually were, I could find any counters. Instead, there were few machines like ATMs scattered around that area. I watched from a distance and it seemed that you had to use them to make the payments. Luckily there was one person who was explaining to others how to operate the machines so I got in line with the queue.

What you have to do first of all is to open a little door in the bottom of the machine and put the clothes in it. Then you will be shown a screen to select (using your finger) if you are member of G.U store. This is due to the fact that they offer discounted prices on some items if you are a member. Since anyone can just say that he is a member, I suppose there is always someone there to confirm it. What you have to do to prove you are a member is just to open the G.U app on your mobile phone and browse to the Member's Page.

Japan Cherry Blossoms (Sakura) 2015–Shinjuku Gyoen Park

In yesterday’s post about Android 5.1 R3 update, I mentioned we were just about go out on a one day trip. This trip was to the Shinjuku Gyoen Park in, well, Shinjuku, to see Cherry Blossoms. This is my second visit, but for my wife and kid, this is their first visit. Part of the 2011 company get together – the event part – was held there.

Before heading there, we weren’t sure if Sakura was at full bloom. I’m sure there are websites that report about the current state, but I couldn’t find any concrete information about it. So we had to make a guess based on the information presented on this website.

We hadn’t made a mistake. In most parts of the park, the Sakura trees were in full bloom. Of course there were many trees that had flower buds that were only starting to bloom. The peak probably would be around the middle of the next week. But we won’t be able to visit there during that time, because of work. But we might visit another Sakura sightseeing area in the next weekend as well, just to see if we can gain an even better experience.

But until then, here are some of the snaps that I took from my Canon 70D. (Of course I took way more than that, but my wife and kid are in them, so I would not post them on the open internet.)

Japan Sakura 2015 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

They've changed the train schedule

This is not a tech post.

I've been deployed to a new site from the end of last year and there is one problem. I don't have flexible working hours anymore. So, now I have to be at work by 8:30 or I will have to take the morning off. However we are expected to arrive by trains as there isn't any parking space for the employees, thus delay in trains will be excused if we can produce the chit proving that there really has been a delay. (Why can’t they show this info on a website?) We can get them from the station master and usually they distribute them when there is an abnormal delay. (I don't think they distribute them for small delays like couple of minutes.)

Luckily for me, I still haven't required to collect that chit during the entire almost-5-years that I've been in Japan. That is not to say that there haven't been delays, but in all those occasions, I've managed to get to the workplace in time. It usually takes about 15 minutes to get from the station to the current office, however once I was forced to get there in just 8 minutes which I managed without much issue. Of course I had to run.

At the beginning, I used to take the 7:35am train bound for Kawasaki. This got me to work way too early. I was at my seat by 8:10am, by walking as slowly as I could to the office from the station. We don't get paid for starting working before 8:30am, so that was highly inefficient. I changed to the 7:45am train and now I take the 7:52am one. But on most days, I miss the 7:52am train and have to go by the 7:55am or 7:57am train. 7:57 train is dangerous because if there is a 10 minute delay, I'm screwed. 7:55 one is OK as it gives me 18 minutes to walk from the station to the office, if the trains are on time.

Devil's Canyon pre-orders are now available (2014-06-13)

Couple of days ago, many shops in Japan started taking pre-orders for the Devil's Canyon CPUs – the 4690K and the 4790K. From past experience, I already knew the prices won't be anywhere near the US prices. But I wanted to just check if I was wrong. Sadly, I wasn't.

The Core i7 4790K model, which is the only one that I really care about, is priced at JPY39,722. The above image shows the prices posted on Tsukumo's website. The prices are same across all shops. Of course, this is inclusive of the 8% consumption tax. But even if you take it away, the price of the CPU would come close to $360 which is $20 more than the US price. Still, it is not that bad, right? Well, the problem is, the 4770K model which is supposed to carry the same price tag as the 4790K, costs JPY3,000 less. So there is no second guessing that all these companies are trying to steal from the early adopters.

I, on the other hand, will not change my stance. I will buy the motherboard + CPU combo because that way I will be entitled to combo deals. Even though my PC downsizing project is standing still as I haven't managed to get rid of the case yet, I will probably get the 4790K + Z97 micro ATX board combo when they come out. There is already one, but that is with the memory as well.

[Rant] My first auction experience

I still want to build a mini-ITX rig. But for that to happen, I have to sell some of the stuff that I have in my PC which cannot go into a mini-ITX system. There are mainly two such parts: the PSU and the case. I can sell the motherboard and the RAM to a shop. Shops don't take PSUs and cases unfortunately. So I have to find someone to hook them up with.

I first posted stuff on Craigslist. But that took me nowhere.

Then I signed up with eBay to sell stuff. That also was too much hassle because I'll have to ship the items overseas.

Then I turned to local auctioning services. The biggest one in Japan is Yahoo Auctions. I'm sure it is possible to sell these items without much trouble over there but there is one catch. To sell stuff, you have to subscribe to Yahoo Premium service with ¥380  monthly subscription fee. On top of that, there is still a service charge when you make a sale. That's too much.

I didn't give up. I searched for auction services that didn’t require a monthly subscription service. And I found one. Guess who? Rakuten! Their service is called Rakuten Auctions. No surprise there. They don't ask for a subscription fee. Only charge is when you make a sale. That's about 6% of the selling price. Sometimes they give back half of it even. Campaigns, campaigns everywhere. Japan must be the country of campaigns.

So I registered in the auction. Since I have never had any experience in auctioning, I wanted to start with the stuff that I really didn't want. I had three such items.

• Zalman CNPS9900MAX-B CPU cooler because I upgraded to the Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme last year.
• Leap Motion Controller because it was a big let down
• Scythe Kaze Master Ace fan controller because I switched to the fan controller on the motherboard.

[Rant] Got the new internet connection confirmed

A couple of days ago, I came home from work and went to take a shower. Like always, I took my iPhone with me, as I listen to podcasts while taking a shower. Otherwise I would feel all alone in there. Anyways, since I didn’t buy 2 year Apple Care protection with my iPhone 5S, I always put the phone in a seal bag so that moisture doesn’t sneak into the phone.

Anyways, while I was half way into the shower, I got a phone call. I figured it could be from NTT, so I answered. Yes, it was a girl from NTT. She told me that they received the fax I sent them the other day. But there was a little problem. I wrote down my wife’s name in short – just the first name and the surname. But since the ID had her full name, they were confused. Seriously? These Japanese people are like robots.

But that’s not the issue. They said the photo of the ID was not that clear enough to make out the full name of her. So I had to read it out one letter by letter. I mean, I was in the middle of a shower and I was feeling cold.

Once that was done, she asked me many questions. If I wanted to sign up for fixed line telephone; if I wanted to use their antivirus scanning; if I wanted to sign up for IPTV etc. etc. I said no to all of them. One of the reason why I bought the connection through Kakaku.com was because I didn’t have to sign up for those bloated services.

Finally we set up a date for them to activate the internet connection and send me their router. If you read my earlier post, I opted to setup everything on my own. It shouldn’t be that hard because I could refer to the current installation when installing the new router. That said, I wasn’t hoping to send the current equipment before I got the new ones. We decided that they should send me the router on Friday evening.

The girl further told me that I would get mail with the instructions on how to connect to the internet – from OCN as well as from NTT.

And, that was it. Finally after about 20 minutes, I was finally able to resume my shower.

[Rant] Vacation time until 6th January, 2014

After today, I'm going to work again on the 6th of January. 9 days of freedom! Oh yeah. We always get this vacation at the end of the year.

But the week starting from 6th of January is going to be very critical. We have a release coming up on Friday and there is so much work still to be done before that. Anyway, I'm going to forget all about it now and start enjoying the vacation - live the moment.

I need to do something useful in the next week. Like playing games, for example. Ha ha! No, seriously, my wife would kick me out of the apartment if I played games throughout the week. I guess I will have to go out with my wife. But it's so cold out here that I doubt even my wife would want to go out.

I would usually visit Sri Lanka during this time because it is so cold out here,  but this time we are staying. Hey, now we have to pay for two air tickets and that's a big sum of money. So we had to limit going to Sri Lanka to once every two years. Sadness, but that’s the way it is.

Well, at least I can keep spending time evaluating whether I need to buy a DSLR or not. Still not sure if I can manage with my S95 or if not, which DSLR to get. I had been eyeing the Canon Kiss X7i (or 700D) with 18-135mm STM lens. It will cost about JPY83.000 though.

• Then I will be getting a new internet connection, but will have to wait till the end of the vacation. Need to do some research on what to get. There are 1Gbps connections too, but I’m fine with this 200Mbps connection as well.  I will go for the ISP that gives the biggest money back discount.
• Then I will look forward to the new graphics cards. The custom cooled R9 290's and the upcoming Maxwell GPUs. But Maxwell is a bit far away and will be out the reach of my pocket for a few months. On the other hand,
• I can get a new pair of earphones for my phone as the Apple EarPods never fit in my ears. Was looking at the  Plantronics BackBeat GO 2 but I’m skeptical that it will work well for me. That’s another gadget that I need to charge every day. And I’m not sure if the prices will drop further. It’s been stable at JPY6,300. Maybe I will get it for my birthday. That’s a month away! w00t.
• On top of all that, I have about JPY6,500 worth points at Sofmap.

Wait. I just remembered something that I can do without spending any money. I need to arrange the cable clutter behind the desk. After I got the new monitor, I couldn't properly do the wiring like the way it was before. In fact, I'm hoping to do a better job this time around.

One more thing. The keys on my Logitech G15 keyboard have gotten so hard to press. They need a lot of force. It makes my fingers hurt when I type and play games for a while. A lot of food and dust particles must be stuck in between the keys. I haven't done a proper cleanup job since I got the keyboard about 4 years ago. No idea how to take out the keys though. I found this article and it seems that I will have to take the keyboard apart to get to the keys. That’s going to take a few hours!

Looks like there are few exciting things for me to do during the week. I hope my wife will find them amusing too.

[Rant] The R9 290 prices are still dropping in Japan

Looks like Japanese people don’t really care about BitCoin mining. The demand for AMD graphics cards isn’t big in Japan. Thus the prices are dropping everyday.

As of today, the cheapest R9 290 card is priced at JPY44,980 or $450. Yes, this is still more expensive that the original MSRP of the card when it was launched in the US. Hey, everything doesn’t always work out the way you like. I should be happy that the price has dropped by $50 in a week. Not to mention, the prices in the US has skyrocketed in the last week or so. Now the R9 290 is priced at $500, if you can find any.

[Rant] It may be sunny, but it is darn cold

What do you feel when you look out the window and see the following scene?

It seems sunny and you feel like going out to enjoy the sun, isn't it so?

But don't be mistaken. You really don't want to go out. It is very cold outside. 

This is not that cold. But in a month or so, that 9℃ will be 0. Still, on a sunny day, if you look out the window, you will feel that it looks like the summer.

[Rant] How cheap would the G602 get?

Remember a while back I was considering getting a Logitech G602 wireless gaming mouse? I didn't want to get it back then because the prices were a bit too steep. I wanted to play the waiting game. Back then, the price of it was hovering around ¥8,000. I've kept a constant look out for price drops ever since and it is getting cheaper by the day - albeit few ¥ here and there.

Now the price of it is around ¥6,700 (as of 2013-12-06). That's a quite a nice price drop, right? I can get it now or wait for the prices to drop even further. It is just like buying stock. You never know when the prices will go up again. So you will have to make a decision at some point whether to risk waiting further or be happy with the current price and never look back afterwards.

You can take a look at how the prices have changed in the last 3 months by clicking this link.

Hmm.....

Since this is not a much needed upgrade, I've decided to wait. As I'm upgrading the display to a 1440p display (which has already arrived and am playing with it right now), there are more pressing matters like getting a faster graphics card because the GTX670 doesn't quite pull the pixels at the rate that I'm comfortable at. But that upgrade is also put on hold until manufacturers come out with non-reference designs for the R9 290 graphics card and also Mantle performance figures. I might still go with NVidia, but I want more options.

What so you guys think? Will it get cheaper? Or should I get it now?

[Rant] JLPT N2 was so hard!!!

Today I went for the JLPT N2 exam. The examination center was Keio University in Hiyoshi. That's a short distance from my work place. So it didn't take a long time for me to get there from home.

Entrance of the Keio University in Hiyoshi. Nice autumn leaves.

The exam was much harder than I thought. Maybe I didn't put enough effort on to it. I'm sure I'm going to fail. I felt that the moment I tried the first 5 questions. The Kanji characters in the first 5 questions were ones I've never even seen before. In the end I didn't have time to answer the last two questions either. They are all MCQs but I didn't want to test the examiner by coloring them after we were asked to stop coloring. Unfortunately, she didn't announce that there was only so and so minutes remaining. I felt she stopped the test earlier than she should have. It read 14:28 on my watch even though the test should have gone till 14:30. Sucks! Otherwise I could have just arbitrarily colored two numbers. To be honest, that's what I did for most questions though.

[Rant] Buying PC parts in Japan

If you are thinking of buying a PC in Japan, the first place that comes to your head is Akihabara. That's where I bought my first PC from. But that was a mistake. Why? Because you can buy one for much cheaper if you buy online.

Why is it cheaper?

Two simple reasons.

Firstly, you can find the cheapest prices for the items that you want to buy via websites like Kakaku. One items could be cheaper at one shop but another item could more expensive at the same shop than another shop. You cannot go to every shop and not down all the prices. However, there are shops that are not registered in Kakaku.