This is a blog I’ve been meaning to write since March, since I went to Japan and bought a Japanese Apple Watch Series 2. But now that the Series 3 has been announced, now’s just as good too.

So in March of this year, I flew to Japan to attend this year’s try! Swift Tokyo conference. To say I had a fantastic time was an understatement. XD

While I was over there, I decided to buy an Apple Watch. Having got a pre-launch developer Series 0, I figured the Series 2 was sufficient to warrant an upgrade. Also I was very curious about the Suica capabilities.

Impressions after one week of owning a Japanese Series 2: Hardware: SO MUCH SNAPPIER than my Series 0. Everything runs at a constant 60FPS. So good. Suica: Absolutely amazing. Works great with my US Apple Pay account. I’ve only had to physically touch cash like twice on this trip. Totally worth it for the 14 days I’m here. XD Ceramic: They had me at ‘virtually scratchproof’. XD It’s very heavy and only looks nice with the Sport or Leather Loop bands, so I’m not sure if I can recommend it. But since I prefer the red Sports band and hate scratched hardware, I love it. All in all: a perfect 5/7.

A post shared by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 7, 2017 at 11:12pm PST

After writing that last blog post about Suica on Apple devices, I knew MOST about the limits of Suica on the App,e Watch, but I still didn’t know for sure if it would work with my iOS setup. So it was still a bit of a gamble.

Does it work?

Yes. It works amazingly well.

MomentOfTruth.mkv XD #AppleWatch #Suica

A post shared by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 28, 2017 at 4:09am PST

So just to confirm what my ‘rig’ was there:

• An iPhone 7 Plus, purchased in Australia.
• An Apple Watch Series 2, purchased in Japan.
• An Apple Pay account, tied to a U.S. bank.

And this all worked without issue. It was just a matter of setting up a new Suica card on the Watch, and then charging it via the Suica app on my iPhone 7.

One thing I didn’t even realise until several days in is that you don’t even need to ‘activate’ it. You can just hold your wrist up to the reader and it will work without issue.

So tl;dr: yes, you can totally buy a Japanese Apple Watch, pair it with an Aussie iPhone, and then charge a brand new Suica card on it using a non-Japanese Apple Pay account. So groovy.

The main thing I was concerned about when I bought this watch was whether it would be easy to recharge the Suica without a Japanese bank account. As Kyosuke Inoue wrote in his blog, Japanese Apple Pay seems to be ‘different’ to the international Apple Pay, so it wasn’t guaranteed to work.

Turns out that’s ‘mostly’ not the case. I was living in America at the time, so I had a U.S bank account with Apple Pay. That account worked perfectly fine. The Suica app on my iPhone used the standard Apple Pay dialog.

But that being said, given how Apple Pay isn’t available on my Australian bank account, I was wondering if I could use a credit card as well. I tried entering in my AMEX credit card directly into the Suica app, and to my absolute surprise and wonder, that worked as well.

So yeah. All in all, getting a Suica enabled Apple Watch, pairing it to my Aussie iPhone, and then working out a way to easily recharge was actually incredibly easy. No unexpected hurdles whatsoever.

Apple Watch Series 3 / iPhone 8 + X
So here’s something completely awesome and TOTALLY unexpected.

From launch until now, Suica capability (or more specifically FeliCa, the tech on which it is built) was available only on iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2 units sold in Japan. After last week’s announcment, Apple put up on the Japanese Apple Pay page that iPhone 8, iPhone X and Apple Watch Series 3 units from ALL regions will have FeliCa enabled.

This is really exciting as now there’s no longer ANY hurdles to getting a Suica-enabled devices. Happy times!

Anyway, I was in Japan for a grand total of 10 days on that trip. But for those 10 days, having Suica on my wrist was goddamned magical. XD

I also love Japan. I spent a chunk of my childhood growing up there and I now enjoy traveling back to the country whenever I can.

So during the September Apple keynote this year, you could imagine how excited how I was when Apple announced not just the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2, but that both of these devices had the necessary capabilities to have Suica loaded onto them.

What’s a Suica? Suica is a NFC-based prepaid smart card that you can use to pay for things in Japan with a simple tap of the NFC receiver. You can buy them pre-charged in Japanese train stations, and while they were originally intended for automatic paying of fares on train lines, they can now also be used to pay at vending machines, and even some types of stores.. Easily the most convenient way of paying for things when you’re over there.

I have a trusty Suica card I bought several years ago, and it still works perfectly every time I travel to Japan. But admittedly the prospect of ditching it and using my iPhone 7 Plus in its place is very appealing to me.

Sadly, there’s a catch. The Suica functionality on these new devices is regrettably limited to the units that are sold in Japan. Unless you physically buy the device at a store in Japan, it simply won’t be visible at all on your device.

According to Ata Distance, it would seem the iPhone models in Japan don’t actually have any different hardware, more that the functionality is simply disabled at the software level on non-Japanese devices due to Japanese regulations. The company in charge of Suica has gone on record saying they’re investigating making the service available to ‘inbound’ visitors, which would hopefully just mean one day Apple could just flip a switch to enable it on all phones.

With all that said, if you’re like me in that you travel to Japan enough times that Suica on your phone would be REALLY useful, what can you do? The obvious solution would be to just simply go and buy an iPhone 7 the next time you’re in Japan.

Don’t do that. All Japanese iPhones are terrible. (Yeah, an Apple fanboy just said an iPhone is terrible. XD)

Due to Japanese law, all Japanese smartphones must play an audible shutter noise when taking a photo. Even if the phone is on mute, it’ll override the volume and play the shutter noise at max volume. In Japan, this is accepted as normal, but in every other country where people are used to silent iOS devices, it can easily be perceived as being very obnoxious. Still, in a country as conscious about privacy as Japan, it’s easy to see why this sort of thing would be law.

But sadly this limitation extends to include every iPhone sold in Japan. So while I would still love Suica on my phone, I also love taking LOTS of photos, so having that camera shutter noise on all the time is a real deal-breaker for me.

So, while the iPhone is definitely a no-go, what about the Japanese Apple Watch?

Only the Series 2 watches have the necessary NFC hardware to handle Suica, but the main question is, can you get Suica working on a Japanese Apple Watch that isn’t paired to a Japanese iPhone? And can you charge it without needing a Japanese credit card?

After some research and testing, the answer is ‘yes’!

Apple has a page on their website explaining how to set up a Suica card on both the phone and the watch. If you already own a physical Suica card, transferring it to a Japanese Apple Watch regrettably requires you to have a Japanese iPhone 7 as well. The hardware to actually scan a physical Suica would appear to only be in the iPhone.

But that’s not the end of it! If you don’t mind registering a new Suica card from scratch for this, you can indeed register a new one Suica online, which can then be loaded onto your watch. There’s no requirements for the iPhone when doing this, as long as it’s one that can actually pair to the watch (i.e iPhone 5 and up).

All you need to do is download the Suica app onto the phone paired with your watch. This appears to be a special app that has system access capabilities beyond what’s normally allowed on the App Store in that it will not work unless it detects that it’s either directly running on a Japanese iPhone 7, or a Japanese Apple Watch is paired with the phone.

An awesome iOS developer living in Japan, Toto Tvalavadze was able to test this personally and confirmed that it worked:

Hah! Managed to load Suica card to Watch S2 without iPhone 7 (via Suica App). Now, off to nearest wending machine. +@TimOliverAU pic.twitter.com/nDneVQhFVu

— Toto Tvalavadze (@totocaster) October 27, 2016

I’d love to extend a massive shoutout to Toto for testing it out, and sharing his results online.

On an additional note while you can’t set up the Suica card to auto-recharge, you CAN manually recharge it from the Suica app with an international credit card. An excellent Japanese iOS developer named Kyoro living in SF was able to confirm this when he managed to get ahold of a Japanese iPhone 7 and tested not just Japanese Apple Pay but charging Suica from the US as well. He wrote a very detailed blog post about it, and while the post is in Japanese, he replied to my comment at the bottom in English.

So there you have it. If you travel to Japan a lot, and you want to get access to Suica on iOS, your best bet is to go and buy a Japanese Series 2 Apple Watch while you’re in the country next time, and then manage it from the offical Suica app.

Now, the only question remaining is if you wear your watch on your left wrist, and the scanner on the ticket gate is on the right side, do you need to walk through it backwards…? XD

Featured image sourced from Apple’s official press release.

So late last year, I was invited by Natasha Murashev (Better known as @NatashaTheRobot) on recommendation of my colleague JP Simard, to come and present at a conference she was organizing in Japan for March of 2016. The conference, known as try! Swift was going to be a 3 day conference consisting of a stream of 25 minute talks, specializing in Swift, Apple’s new programming language but also including iOS development in general.

A trip to Japan (one of my favorite places), to hang out with iOS developers and talk about app development (one of my favourite things)? I couldn’t say ‘hell yes’ fast enough!  

Since I still consider myself very new to Swift (A lot of my work still involves Objective-C, Apple’s previous language. Like an animal. XD), I elected to do a presentation around Core Animation, the system framework on iOS responsible for basically all of the on-screen graphics. I’ve spent a lot of time playing with different settings and effects with Core Animation while developing iComics so I was relatively confident I might have some little tidbits of information that would be useful to share with others. Additionally… as three quarters of the conference attendees were Japanese, I decided to try delivering the presentation in Japanese as well. No pressure. XD

The trip to Japan was very relaxing, and some of the views I managed to see from the plane were amazing.

Throwback to when I was flying to Japan, I was in just the right seat to get a snap of Rottnest Island as the plane was turning North. It was absolutely breathtaking to see the whole island at once.

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 21, 2016 at 1:13am PDT

I touched down in Haneda Airport in the early hours of Friday, happy to be back in Japan!

Blimey. I’m back! XD | やれやれ、ただいま戻っちゃいました！ XD

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 25, 2016 at 12:55pm PST

The very first thing I did was go and pick up my rental SIM card. Like I’ve written in many of my previous blogs, I still use JCR Corp for my Japanese 4G data/telephone needs which includes a convenient mail service straight to the airport. Times have changed a little bit since the last time I was in Japan; I ran into some trouble getting my rental SIM to work because it wouldn’t let me input the APN settings for it (The menu just straight up disappeared from Settings.app when I inserted it!). Thankfully JCR Corp provided a solution in the manual they provided me (tl;dr: use http://unlockit.co.nz to install a custom APN profile) that ended up working great in the end. I think I might need to write a new blog post about that.

For my first leg of the trip, I travelled to Kyoto via Shinkansen (The Japanese bullet trains) to catch up with a Perth friend who had moved there for work. This time around, I decided to try out the ‘Green Car’ (First class) option of the Shinkansen. It’s only marginally more than a standard ticket, and it is soooo nice. With larger chairs, THAT ALSO RECLINE as well as a dedicated spot for luggage, it felt like a dream straight after traveling in a plan for 10 hours. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Arrived in Kyoto! It’s even colder than Tokyo! I love it! XD

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 25, 2016 at 9:55pm PST

I had an absolutely fantastic time in Kyoto. My friend was doing really well, and it was great to visit his company for their monthly gaming meetup. I met a lot of different types of people I totally wasn’t expecting, including a freelance iOS developer, and a visual effects artist from Sydney!

Last night I was lucky enough to be invited to Vitei’s monthly gaming, sandwiches and beer nights! I made some new friends, got rekt in Bomberman, kicked a few Jigglypuff butts in Smash, and overall had an excellent time! ^_^

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 26, 2016 at 9:16pm PST

Kyoto itself is incredibly beautiful. Nestled within the hills, with its very traditional architecture, it gives off a much more quiet, relaxing vibe than Tokyo. The weather was also crazy this time of year, staying mostly under 0 degrees Celsius for the entire time I was there. Coming straight out of Perth summer, that was a bit of a shock to the old system. XD

Yep. Definitely not Perth. XD #Kyoto

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 26, 2016 at 10:49pm PST

While down in the area, I also popped into the Osaka Pokémon Center with my friends to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pokémon, and to pick up the re-releases of the original games!

WOOHOO THE POKÉMON CENTER OSAKA. GEN VII GET HYPE! XD

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 27, 2016 at 1:03am PST

So, I didn't actually realise until later that today was THE ACTUAL 20th anniversary of Pokémon's original release date. Blimey! As amazing as that is, that also makes me feel SO OLD right now. ^_^; Happy birthday Pokémon! Here's to another 20 years. Cheers! ^_^ (P.S Pretty sure Jigglypuff is my spirit guide there. XD)

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 27, 2016 at 7:47am PST

On the final day, I caught up with some old friends from when I travelled to Japan on behalf of the Australian Government in 2006. We had a great lunch together and reminisced on how quickly time flies (10 years already! XD). After that, we went and checked out a nearby optical illusions mueseum, which was hilarious fun.

Went to "Trick Art" with @eri.mk18 today! It was a museum full of optical illusions! I did my best to ham it up as much as I physically could! XD Thanks for such a lovely day Eri! ^_^

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 27, 2016 at 11:48pm PST

After that, it was back to Tokyo! After checking into a hotel in Shinagawa, I started meeting up with a lot of the other attendees and other presenters! I had been a long time follower on Twitter of a lot of the other presenters, so it was an absolutely awesome feeling to actually meet them in person. The day before the conference, a group of us met up and climbed Roppongi Hills to watch the sunset over Tokyo:

So a bunch of international iOS developers travelled to the top of Roppongi Hills and took in the view.

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 29, 2016 at 11:56pm PST

Watching the sun go down from the top of Roppongi Hills! You can BARELY see Mt Fuji's peak off to the left!

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 1, 2016 at 12:24am PST

I definitely have to say, watching the sun set over Tokyo was definitely one of the highlights of my year so far. That was absolutely stunning.

The next day was the first day of try! Swift. After only catching some random tweets and Slack messages, I didn’t have a proper idea of what it was going to look like. When I stepped through the doors, I was absolutely blown away.

It's on! ? #tryswiftconf

A photo posted by Realm (@realmstagram) on Mar 1, 2016 at 4:07pm PST

What a lovely day for an iOS conference! #tryswiftconf

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 1, 2016 at 3:55pm PST

The conference was being held in the seminar room of CyberAgent Inc, located right next to Shibuya station. While I’d heard the number of attendees was around 500, I still wasn’t properly fathoming HOW MANY PEOPLE THAT ACTUALLY WAS until I saw the seat layout. Absolutely epic!

The structure of the conference was very straightforward. There was a single-track of presentations, each one 25 minutes long. Each attendee was given a ‘receiver’ device, in which during each presentation, a team of interpreters in the back of the room would provide a live translation between Japanese and English depending on the speaker. The emcee of the event was my colleague Katsumi Kishikawa who did a fantastic job in managing the flow of the conference and performing announcments in both English and Japanese. To keep everything running smoothly, after their presentation, each speaker would move to a separate room where they could handle Q&A with a dedicated interpreter present. The logistics that went into everything behind this conference was mind-boggling. XD

The talks were all fascniating, all including a variety of topics, not just encompassing writing code in Swift, but the entire build process for creating great apps for iOS. In the morning of the first day, my colleague JP presented on his research on compiling Swift on other platforms beyond OS X and iOS.

Realm's own @jpsim talking about Swift on multiple platforms! Go JP!

A photo posted by Realm (@realmstagram) on Mar 1, 2016 at 5:43pm PST

In the middle of the day, I met and hung out with a few of my Twitter heroes.

Lunch with these iOS experts = magical @allonsykraken @ayanonagon @purpleyay @chriseidhof @TimOliverAU @nerdonica pic.twitter.com/5FAxDB6rK8

— Novall Khan (@novallkhan) March 3, 2016

The rest of the first day was a blur for me. I was going to present my talk in the middle of the afternoon. While I’ve done quite a few presentations before (Including several in Japanese in the past), this was easily the most nervous I’d ever been, on account of both the complexity of the content and the number of people I was talking to. To say I was nervous as hell was an understatment.

HAHAHA ABOUT TO TRY AND SPEAK JAPANESE IN FRONT OF 500 PEOPLE. WITNESS MEEEeeeee… ^_^;

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 1, 2016 at 10:31pm PST

The process for presenting from the backstage perspective was very interesting. Each presenter went to a meeting room before their presentation where they had a 30 minute consultation with the interpreters. Here the interpreters would bring out a copy of your slides and transcript and ask for clarification on any particular words or phrases they didn’t quite understand. The goal wasn’t to have an absolute 1-to-1 translation of what you were planning to say, but to have a ‘general gist’ of what you were thinking of saying at hand to make their work easier. Seriously, I have a mad level of respect for people in the interpreting industry. It’s a skill unlike no ever. Even if you’re completelyt bilingual, it’s still something that requires a lot of training and experience.

In any case, I went out there and delivered my presentation in Japanese as best as I could, and hoped like hell it would actually make sense. Most thankfully, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Twitter lit up with people talking about all of the new things they learned from my talk, and many people also tweeted at me asking additional questions.

Awesome talk by @TimOliverAU on advanced hacks with Core Animation!

Currently reverse engineering the lock screen! pic.twitter.com/4FVup8NvYZ

— Adam Bell (@b3ll) March 2, 2016

1st talk I attended was, naturally, animation-related. ?'d talk from @TimOliverAU on Core Animation! #tryswiftconf pic.twitter.com/SmvEIB3iuq

— Natasha Godwin (@natashasgodwin) March 2, 2016

My colleague @TimOliverAU is killing it with his presentation on Core Animation at @tryswiftconf… in Japanese! pic.twitter.com/9LrlcCLGVD

— JP Simard (@simjp) March 2, 2016

Also judging from the tweets, the ‘spectacle’ of a caucasian person speaking Japanese was apparently VERY entertaining. XD

Why do I have a translator in my ears to listen to @TimOliverAU give his CA talk? He's Aussie? He's talking Japanese! #tryswiftconf

— Phill Farrugia (@phillfarrugia) March 2, 2016

So @TimOliverAU is doing his #tryswiftconf talk in fluent Japanese while I'm listening to live English translation pic.twitter.com/FvqZAN8f4w

— NatashaTheRobot (@NatashaTheRobot) March 2, 2016

@TimOliverAU I think she’s having trouble understanding you

— Sean Woodhouse (@seanwoodhouse) March 2, 2016

In any case, I’m really REALLY happy that the talk went down well and I heard from so many people that they learned something new out of it. ^_^

And my #tryswiftconf talk is done! Boy that feels liberating! XD Thank you so much for all of the positive feedback and the photos everyone! I went into that talk absolutely terrified, so I really appreciate it! ^_^

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 2, 2016 at 12:32am PST

With my talk out of the way, I enjoyed the hell out of the rest of try! Swift. The content and the people I talked to were absolutely fascinating, and I managed to take away a whole bunch of useful information for my work with both Realm and iComics.

One of the other major ‘highlights’ was that one of the other presenters referenced my talk in their own presentation, but forgot my name and called me Tom instead. And that somehow stuck and became a meme for the rest of the time. XD

Guys…. pic.twitter.com/s8HVrYToAg

— Tim Oliver (@TimOliverAU) March 3, 2016

On the second night, I attended a joint dinner between the sponsors and the presenters.

So a pile of iOS developers walk into a bar… XD

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 3, 2016 at 4:41am PST

Crazily enough, I ran into my old team leader from pixiv at that party! It was great to see him again, and we both totally rocked out at karaoke afterward!

In any case, the conference came to a close way too quickly. We had a fanstistic closing talk, and an absolutely jam-packed, but amazing after-party afterwards.

And with that, #tryswiftconf 2016 is over! I had an absolutely wonderful time. I learned a tonne, made a lot of new friends, and even somehow became a meme…? ^_^; Anyway, major props to @natashathenomad, Katsumi and everyone else who worked so hard on the event! Here's to try! Swift 2017! XD

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 4, 2016 at 6:54am PST

The last few days were then basically spent catching up on all of the stuff I wanted to do in Japan but hadn’t had the time yet.

Having absolutely not lost any momentum for iOS learning, the very next day, I also managed to make it to the Tokyo iOS Meetup, something I wanted to do the last time I was in Japan, but missed out!

After a whole year, I finally made it to a Tokyo iOS Meetup!

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 4, 2016 at 6:21pm PST

Awesomely enough, I managed to get in touch with one of my classmates from when I attended elementary school in Japan in 1996. It was absolutely surreal meeting someone who hadn’t seen in 20 years! We reflected and/or lamented on what the hell has happened in that time. XD

I met up with Marina tonight, one of my classmates from when my family moved to Chiba for 6 months in 1996! We hadn't seen each other in nearly 20 years so we had a LOT to talk about! It was great to see you again Marina! ^_^

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 5, 2016 at 2:56am PST

I FINALLY went and checked out the Gundam statue in Odaiba with some of the other conference folks.

After several years, I finally went to visit the giant Gundam statue in Odaiba. Wow. That thing is so incredibly detailed. Right down to the decals on every panel. Definitely worth checking out.

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 6, 2016 at 1:52am PST

I met up with the man responsible with hooking up my dad with the job that moved us all to Japan in 1996. He was doing well and looking forward to being a grandfather for a second time. Absolutely fantastic to hear.

Caught up with the man who invited my father to work in Japan in 1996 which set off my family's love of Japan which has now continued on for nearly two decades. Great to see you again Uncle Toshio! ^_^

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 6, 2016 at 4:41am PST

I went to Akihabara multiple times, of course, and did my usual lap of the main street sussing out discount games and manga in the various second-hand stores.

Ahhh. I'm home. XD #Akihabara

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 6, 2016 at 9:31pm PST

I popped into the pixiv office. Since my time there, they’d bought a whole second floor and moved my old division to that one, which now looks just as crazy (The Evangelion tables were a nice new addition!)

Popped briefly into the pixiv office to see how everyone's going/wish my former boss a happy birthday. XD Soooo much has changed since the time I was working there. This was the first time I've seen the new office on the second floor of the building. I also got to hear a little on what's coming up with pixiv's iOS apps. Exciting times ahead!

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 7, 2016 at 10:14am PST

And JUST before I went home, I did my usual crazy thing of going to a CoCo Ichibanya and ordering the spiciest level on their menu. In hindsight, that was a ridiculously stupid thing to do before jumping on a plane…

Last night in Japan. Decided to pop out for a level 10 curry at CoCo's. Didn't hurt at all. Now I'm scared. XD

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 8, 2016 at 5:36am PST

And before I even realised it, my trip had come to an end, and I was back at Haneda Airport, ready to head home.

Blimey. And that's my trip to Japan over and done with! What a ridiculously wild week and a half that was! I've never felt so busy in that short amount of time before! XD It was absolutely fantastic making so many new friends and catching up with old ones. Thanks for everything! Hopefully I can come back again soon! See you in Perth!

A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 8, 2016 at 4:39pm PST

The trip was amzing. Holy crap, it was amazing. I’m pretty sure I haven’t been more busy in a single trip to Japan than that before, but it was worth it a thousand times over. I made so many new friends, and I learnt so much more about iOS development that the whole trip was invaluable to both my career and what I love doing in my free time. It was also somewhat ironic that in a single conference trip, I learned more about the iOS scene in Japan than a year living there (Granted, Meetup.com wasn’t a thing in Japan back then so it was harder!).

Words cannot express how grateful I am for that oppurtunity. Absolute mad props need to go to Natasha for setting up the conference, Katsumi for making sure it ran with total perfection and to everyone else who helped make it happen. That was easily one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended.

Would I do it all again? Absolutely. Here’s to try! Swift 2017!

That being said however, while JCRCorp is really good, their rates start to get quite expensive the longer you stay in Japan. It’s probably fair to say that this is a service that is geared mainly towards tourists of Japan; those only staying for a short while before promptly leaving.

So last year, when I went to go work at pixiv, something I knew that I would be doing in upwards of 7 months, I figured I’d have to do something else. I also figured that since I would be going to Japan on a working visa, I could most likely pop into a telco shop and just grab a pre-paid SIM card.

So, armed with my carrier-unlocked iPhone 5 (Bought outright from Apple), I traveled over to Japan!

Unfortunately, when I got there, a few of my friends who had traveled over there a few months early, broke the news to me; apparently a ‘pre-paid SIM’ as we know and understand it in Australia, doesn’t really work in Japan.

It turns out that Japanese telephone companies are pretty draconian when it comes to what phones work with their services. If it isn’t one of their specifically branded models, or in the case of iPhone, not a device you didn’t specifically get from them, they don’t want to let you onto their network.

In fact, one of my friends put it best:

It’s easier to not think of Japanese phone companies as companies offering phone services. More, they’re simply mobile hardware companies that just HAPPEN to offer phone plans on the side.

It’s incredibly rare times like these when I realise we actually do have it pretty good in some cases in Australia (All phone companies here offer any sort of ‘bring-your-own-device’ plans).

In any case, it was starting to look like the only solution to having an iPhone with voice and data (without paying ludicrous amounts of money.) was to start a phone contract with one of the companies, and get a new iPhone with it.

Sadly, that wasn’t very feasible either, the fact I’d be locked into a 2 year contract asside, not only was it pretty pointless to have two iPhone 5 devices (If the 5s was out by then, MAYBE…), but because all Japanese phone companies don’t offer carrier unlocking (ie, all of their iPhones are permanently tied to their own networks), when it came time to go back to Australia, that second iPhone wouldn’t ever be able to work over there. And while I thought I could probably just break off the contract and sell off the phone, I got the feeling that would end up being prohibitively expensive anyway.

Just as I was about to give up hope and start looking at maybe buying a $20 clamshell phone from one of the companies, another friend pointed me in the direction of b-mobile. Thankfully, b-mobile was a proper pre-paid SIM card service, that worked outside of the scope of the main telephone companies.

Getting a b-mobile SIM card was really easy. It was just a matter of jumping on Amazon Japan, buying the pack containing the SIM (Although we later discovered that there are certain electronic shops in Tokyo that sell them too), insert the SIM into the phone and then getting a friend with a proper Japanese phone to call the activation number.

That being said, there were a few catches. Firstly, there was no voice component; it was data only. That was okay though, since I usually do all of my communications through Twitter anyway, and the rare times I did need to do a voice call, I just used Skype for iOS.

The price wasn’t too bad either; it was ¥3,000 (Around 30 bucks) for 1GB a month (Which, given the wifi hotspot heavy nature of Japan), was more than sufficient. Recharging the SIM card was easy enough; you just jumped onto the b-mobile website, registered an account and used your credit card to recharge each month.

Another thing we discovered later on was that b-mobile also offer ‘combined’ packs with 2 SIM cards in them. So you could attach both an iPhone and an iPad to the same 1GB pool, and share between the devices.

And that was how I survived in Japan with my Aussie iPhone for 7 months.

As a quick disclaimer, this may not be the absolute BEST solution; just the one I ended up going with. If you do happen to know of a better solution (Something like a pre-paid SIM that offers voice and data, but doesn’t break the bank), please post it in the comments!

Finally, as a bit of a recent update to all of this, apparently the Japanese communications ministry have started considering enacting a law to force the Japanese phone companies to start allowing carrier unlocking on their handsets.

Finally!! Communications ministry calls for end of SIM lock & Softbank CEO Son flips a table, expressing outrage http://t.co/NtlmXybd6m

— Rekishi no Tabi (@RekishinoTabi) July 1, 2014

If that actually happens, that would be so, SO much nicer for all of us!

Naturally, I was there in a heartbeat to give it a try.

As was probably to be expected, a HUGE chunk of the game show floor was dedicated to the placement of Nintendo 3DS stations with copies of Pokémon X and Y running. To get in, you had to present your guide map from your Pokémon show bag, which would then be stamped (Assuming so people couldn’t keep going back for more. XD). A guide would then take you to one of the 3DS stations and give you instructions on how to play.

I probably don’t have to explain what the demo featured, as many people way more versed in Pokémon lore than me at this point have already posted about it, so I’ll just give my general impression about it.

Back in 2000, when Pokémon Red and Blue were being superseded by Pokémon Yellow, Pokémon Stadium came out. When I first saw a demo of Pokémon Stadium, I had a grandiose vision of it that it was just like the (at the time 8-bit) Game Boy Pokémon series, with the full world-traveling storyline and everything, in full 3D. Sadly, that wasn’t actually the case…

… until now.

Basically, from what I saw in that demo, Pokémon X and Y fulfilled the vision that my 14 year old self had more than a decade ago. It. Is. Amazing.

And the weird thing is, it felt perfectly natural going from the pseudo-isomorphic 2D/3D feeling we had in Pokémon generations IV and V to complete 3D in generation VI. They absolutely nailed it.

Seriously. If Nintendo is having trouble pushing 3DS hardware at the moment, they won’t once this game hits the stores.

My only problem is that thanks to Nintendo’s policy on region locking the 3DS (Incidentally, go sign this petition!), I have no idea whether I should buy an Aussie 3DS or a Japanese 3DS. ಠ_ಠ

Anyway. Yes, Pokémon X and Y is amazing. Yes, it appears to cost more than previous generations, but yes it’s going to be worth it.

So when I heard about the Pokémon Game Show that was going to be held in Tokyo, which would be featuring playable copies of X and Y, there was no question about going or not. XD

The event was being held at Tokyo Big Sight, so less than a week after Comiket ended, I always already heading back there again. Thankfully, this time around, the crowd was SLIGHTLY smaller than what was at Comiket.

After seeing such a massive crowd at Comiket (And also at Reitaisai), it was kind of weird to see Big Sight so empty this time around.

In any case, when I got a bit closer, I knew I was definitely in the right place.

Unlike Comiket and Reitaisai, getting in was actually somewhat different. As it turns out, due to the volume of people in the show floor, it was actually necessary to stagger the entry of new people until the others had left. So after I initially went in (After a baggage check, interestingly enough), I was required to wait in line with a block of people for about 20 minutes or so. (I guess this is actually pretty normal, but coming from Perth, I can understand why I’ve never seen it before. XD)

After finally entering the show floor, I was immediately floored at the size and scale of it. Holy crap it was massive!

Not only that, the place was fully decked out. There was an amazing light-show at the front door, there were giant Poké balls floating in the air, and there were awesome Pokémon stands featuring the starters and the legendaries from all of the games every 20 metres. XD

The show floor was divided up into multiple sections, each catering to different Pokémon related activities. In the corner, there was a Pokémon Tretta lab in the corner, where the prize for winning was an exclusive Red Genesect tile.

In the middle, there a dedicated section for video/ card game Pokémon battles, with a raised stage in the middle. Suffice it to say, incredibly awesome. XD

And in the far corner, was the Pokémon X and Y exhibition (Will write more on that later).

Beyond that, there were a few other sections, of which I’ve uploaded photos onto my Flickr.

Overall, it was an amazing day. It’s sometimes hard to fathom just how popular Pokémon is; especially in Japan. But when there’s events like this, it blows your mind even more. XD

Since I’m almost about to go home to Australia, I have very little space for buying any more things, and not to mention this weekend went on record to be ONE OF THE HOTTEST in Japan’s meteorological history, I was a little hesitant about going. But I figured, since I’d come this far, it’d be worth going to check it out, if only  for the experience. Whoo boy, and what an experience that was! XD

I decided I was only going to rock up and hour or so before it ended. I just wanted to walk around a bit, check out how the place was laid out, check out the pixiv booth, and then pop home before heat stroke set in. XD

Being from a small Australian city, I’ve only ever been used to conventions ranging in sizes of 4,000 to 18,000 attendees. Jumping off the train and witnessing the magnitude of Comiket’s over 500,000 attendee reputation BLEW MY MIND. This thing is big. It is crazy big. Holy crap it was big. XD

Having been a volunteer at Perth’s most kickass Japan-themed convention, I was also keeping an eye out for how the event was managed. It was absolutely incredible how meticulous crowd flow was managed from the train station right through the entire convention centre.

I basically did one lap of both halls to check out what kind of goods were on display, before heading up to the industry booth section. While I was walking through the rows of tables, looking at all of the comics, music, games and animation DVDs, I couldn’t help but feel a great deal of admiration for everyone there. I feel like I can only appreciate a small amount of the sheer amount of work that goes into those creations and how proud they must feel when people come up and buy that work.

Since my Australia-bound luggage-space is already at a premium, I originally wasn’t planning on buying anything. But as I was walking through one of the rows, a very enthusiastic chap offered me to browse one of his artbooks, and then got 4 of his friends to train their fans on me as I was browsing it. Figuring that gesture alone was worth it, I bought the book off him. I plan to cherish it as my first official book from Comiket. ^_^

In any case, while I was a bit sad I didn’t get much time to look at any more goods in great detail, I ultimately don’t regret going at the end of the event. To say it was HOT is a crazy understatement, and by the time the event officially closed, I was completely drenched in sweat and partially blind as a result. ^_^;

Overall, I still found the whole experience amazing and definitely worthwhile, even in the extreme heat. Even though I’ll be back in Australia by then, I’m definitely considering flying to Japan for Winter Comiket and actually doing the whole thing properly next time.

Making things a bit more interesting, I also had a few criteria for the apartment of my dreams:

• pixiv have a policy where they can add help subsidise your apartment rent, providing the apartment is within a certain distance from the office (So, the closer to the building in Sendagaya, the better!)
• Since I knew I wasn’t planning to stay in the longterm, ideally the place would be pre-furnished.
• IDEALLY (but not necessarily), I would like a place that wouldn’t require me to commit to a 2 year contract (And then having to pay piles of money to cancel down the track)

A few weeks before leaving Perth, in probably the most stereotypical way of looking for apartments in Japan, I started my search on GaijinPot.com. I’d heard from a few people that it’s not unheard of for landlords to refuse new tenants purely because they’re not Japanese before, so I figured if it was listed there, they should all be okay.

There ended up being quite a few interesting places on GaijinPot. There was one particular one that I especially liked the look of since it had a loft above the kitchen where the bed (I like lofts. XD) So I sent a message to the realtor and asked that (given my set of criteria above) whether it might be possible to rent that one when I got to Japan. I promptly received a reply from a realtor from Tokyo Best Realtors explaining to me that although that particular unit DID require a 2 year commitment, if we met up once I arrived in Tokyo, they’d be able to help me find a much better suited apartment. I agreed and we scheduled a meeting on the first Saturday of me arriving in Tokyo (free of charge!).

When I actually arrived in Tokyo, I was expecting to start working at pixiv straight away, so I was a little nervous at imagining how I was going to manage full-time work, out of a hotel, while at the same time searching for an apartment (To the point where I was wondering if I should have committed to an apartment before coming to Japan). Interestingly/thankfully, when I arrived at the office, I was informed that it was necessary for my employment registration (including bank account registration) that I have a permanent address before I could actually officially start work. So with my newfound free time, I was looking forward to securing an apartment as fast as possible.

On the first Saturday of being in Japan, I went and met Mr Taka Nomura of Tokyo Best Realtors in a café in Shinjuku to discuss apartment options in the area. Thankfully, he spoke absolutely flawless English, so it was very easy to get down to business (I doubt that I could have done that with my Japanese!).

Mr Nomura explained to me that there is actually a central database of available housing in Japan, accessible only via licensed realtors, and that although online sites like GaijinPot display a good number of apartments, the central database has the most comprehensive list. After showing me the database, he told me that even if I couldn’t get a furnished apartment, it IS possible to rent a full furniture set in Japan (on a yearly basis), so it’s not completely necessary to search for furnished apartments. Anyway, after doing a little bit of searching in the general Shinjuku area, we discovered that there were actually 2 short-term apartments that were available for rent on an ongoing basis (ie you could cancel at any time). One was quite small, but close by, and there was another one that was further away, but a lot bigger.

As it looked like time was going to be of the essence, we left the cafe to go check out the smaller apartment to see what it was like. Since I was actually expecting something tiny, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was actually quite open and felt rather roomy; more than enough for my needs. On top of that, it was still in the range of the pixiv housing subsidy. So without doing too much thinking, I told Mr Nomura that I would definitely like to rent this apartment. Mr Nomura said he’d contact the landlord and see if they’d accept my application.

A few days later, I received an email from Mr Nomura saying that the landlord approved and the apartment would be mine once I’d paid the initial invoice, which consisted of all of the initial setup fees such as cleaning, lock fitting, and remaining rent for the month. After paying that straight away, I had another meeting with Mr Nomura to sign the contract and receive the key, and that was it! The place was mine!

Overall, the process was very quick. It took less than 2 weeks to go from having absolutely no idea what to do, to receiving the keys to my new apartment. I was very impressed at Mr Nomura’s handling of the whole process. He was extremely professional and meticulous in explaining all of the details, and was always extremely prompt when communicating via email.

After this experience, if I was going to do this again, my recommendation now is to most likely bypass GaijinPot and just meet with a Tokyo real estate agency directly once you’ve arrived in Japan. Since they all have access to the same database, you won’t find different places at different agencies, and so it’ll boil down to how the agency will treat you. At this point, I’m very glad to vouch for Tokyo Best Realtors as their service was absolutely amazing.

If you have any questions about this post, feel free to follow me on Twitter, or like my Facebook page!

G'day everyone!

Sorry about the delay, things have been absolutely crazy lately. XD

Due to various circumstances, I've ended up with a bit of spare time, so I thought I'd give this blog a bit of love.

So, in case anyone missed the memo, I'm in Japan right now. ^_^ After applying last year, and making it through 2 interviews, I accepted a job to work at pixiv as a mobile application developer. I arrived here last Thursday and have been settling in since. I haven't started work yet as there's still a few logistics involved with getting set up beforehand (Really important things. Like choosing an awesome email address. XD). However, I've already gone and met my team and had a look at the kind of projects I'll be joining/potentially spearheading. Sadly, I can't publicly talk about them until they've been announced, but trust me when I say, they're pretty damn awesome.

In a sad, sad, tragic, horrific series of events, I'm currently without a laptop; my MacBook Air's keyboard kicked the bucket a few days ago. Figuring that now would be the best time as any to go without a laptop for a few days, I handed it in to the Shibuya Apple Store and have been rolling on just my iPad since then.

It's definitely a bit of a different experience coming to Japan to work, instead of on travel. Obviously, there's a few more things you have to worry about like setting up a bank account and working out a short-long term accommodation plan. Also, things that are pretty easy to manage when on a quick stay, like renting a SIM card for your mobile phone become a little more complicated. These are all excellent topics for more blog posts down the track.

In any case, I've still got a backlog of posts I want to write from 2012, so I might spend my laptop-less time updating this blog with all of these incredibly late posts. XD

Take care everyone!

In case you haven’t heard yet, as of today, the next generation of Pokémon games, generation 5, Pokémon White and Black were released today!

It’s a pretty interesting turn of events here. There are now 156 new Pokémon (more than the original game!), as well as a pretty radical new 3D camera perspective compared to the last games. Interestingly, it’s still out on the DS, which is a first for the Pokémon generations. Maybe this is an indication of the refresh of game consoles slowing down… O_o

While I was over in Japan, I got the chance to go to a Pokémon Center (basically an epic Pokémon merch shop) and see several demo units of the game, and several promo videos on display. Right then and there I decided I definitely had to get it. XD

Sadly, since I’ve already come home from Japan, I wasn’t really sure how I could actually buy this thing. I was thinking of asking one of my Japanese mates to buy it and mail it to me, but that’s an epic inconvenience that I’d rather not do. After checking out eBay and PlayAsia, I found out that with the relative yen rates (Assuming the game is 5000 yen… give or take), it’s only about 6 bucks more from PlayAsia than if I bought it off the shelf in Japan. eBay was about the same… but given I’ve ordered stuff off PlayAsia before, I know those guys have very high quality of service and delivery. (eBay probably should only be used as a last resort for these things. XD )

So with that being said, I placed an order for Pokémon Black on PlayAsia and straight away got confirmation of it being sent. XD
I definitely can’t wait to play this game… although I might have to brush up on my Japanese in the meantime. My Japanese copy of HeartGold was somewhat easier to understand since I’d already played Silver classic and knew the story, but this one’s going to be somewhat different… XD

Interestingly, I also read this game might be region-locked on DSi’s. Thankfully I have a DS lite that I bought from Japan, so that’s alright, but I want to find an Aussie DSi so I can test that theory.

In any case, if you’re thinking of getting an import copy of Pokémon Black or White, I’d definitely recommend PlayAsia. ^_^
If you do, please feel free to contact me so we can trade! ^_^

If you’re wondering how to do the special e symbol ( é ) in Pokémon, on Windows, you hold down Alt and press 130 on the numpad, and on Mac you press Alt-E, release Alt and hit E again. Yes I am a crazy perfectionist nerd. XD