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On April the 1st, Japan will be the same no more.

25th of Mar, 2006ce* in: japan

A new bill was passed into Japanese law some time ago outlawing the sale of Japanese electronics over the age of 5 years old, if they have an internal power transformer.

This is a disaster for the electronic hub of Tokyo, a place called Akihabara. Or “electric town”. April the 1st (no fool) will be a very quiet day, as half of the stores that were open on the previous day will either have little stock to sell or shut entirely. Somewhat rich pickings for those of us that want these electronics in the coming days. I shall be checking out the situation on monday and hopefully get a bargain or two! (I’m in the market for a TV)

Somewhat alarmingly, this also spells the end for several popular electronic items such as the Sega Saturn and the Sega Dreamcast, both of which have internal transformers and both of which are over 5 years old. Understanding this, I went for a shop at a not-so-local place an hours journey on the train from my house. For just over 10,000円 ($100 / 50GBP) I was able to snap up the following items (all boxed):

Original Sega Dreamcast (water cooled version, salary man box)
Sega DC Karaoke machine (slots in under the console, has Sega Microphone and 16,000 songs!)
Dreameye (dreamcast webcamera)
3 controllers
Seaman microphone
Seaman VMU
keyboard, mouse
Samba De Amigo unit (amazingly it only cost 1000 yen / 5GBP $10!! This thing would cost you hundreds on ebay)
Some games

I’m considering picking up a Saturn, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. The only game I’d want to play on that system is Panzer Dragoon.

On monday I’m going to pick up some NES and SNES things, just incase. All these goods are fairly common right now, but will become very scarce in just a few days, limiting their sale to overseas only, and even such giants as Yahoo Auction (the ebay of Japan) will enforce a ban on listing “fire hazzard” goods. Fire hazzard my arse.

If you know of any Dreamcast goods that I haven’t picked up, do tell. To my knowledge I’ve only missed out the Steering Wheel unit (I already have DC sticks and VirtuaOn sticks)