Gadgets And Service

I must confess that I have gone a bit crazy with the electronic gadgets since living in Tokyo, we both have.

A far cry from our humble beginnings of sitting on cushions on the cold wood floor, eating 2-minute noodles off an upturned cardboard box - our apaato is now adorned with all manner of electronic gadgetry: a laptop computer, recordable MD walkman, bass guitar effects box, digital video camera, pocket-size digital camera, the colour-screen cell phone... I don't mean to brag but it is just bizarre that these little indulgences have slowly become as required an accessory as toilet paper and toothpaste.

But the one thing that I really treasure, is really my pressscious, is my Sharp eDictionary.

Kim bought this little beauty for me for Christmas and, once I worked out how to operate it, not a day has passed when I haven't used it. I can look up Japanese characters in a flash, I can find all compounds that use it (for those who haven't tried studying Japanese before, the biggest hurdle to reading the language is the kanji, an alphabet of thousands of hieroglyphics that all look like pictographs of a little man doing a karate chop).

A regular comprehensive kanji dictionary does not come pocket-sized. They are big and heavy and it takes several minutes to flick through the pages to look up a character. And even then you can't necessarily find any words that use that character (maybe a limited list), so then you have to revert to another big and heavy Japanese-English dictionary and, well, it's just a long and tedious process.

However, my eDictionary has 16 (count em) dictionaries built into one slim line ultra cool mini-laptop unit. There is the proverbs dictionary (my favourite: "as difficult as putting in eye drops from the second floor"), the medical terminology dictionary with diagrams of the human body (just in case), even an English-English dictionary for when one of my students fires one out of left field at me (Excuse me Mr Matthew, what does "obsequious" mean? Err, hang on a minute...). And for the serious student of Japanese it is also full of example sentences. And I can jump between all the different dictionaries endlessly.

Well, that is, I could until I stepped on the fucking thing.

Yep, not three weeks after I received the ultimate gadget, raved about it to my friends and set my sights firmly on passing the level 2 Japanese exam with its help, I carelessly left it under the blanket of our kotatsu (heated table). I didn't even realise I had done it at the time, our apartment sometimes has so much junk lying around that I assumed the "crack" I heard to just be an old piece of rice cracker or something.

That is until I went to use it next.

Now I have only cried twice since living in Japan. Once was in Hokkaido while we were watching a cheesy daytime TV drama about a stubborn blind girl with a guide dog named "Happy" who had to swallow her pride and ask someone for directions on the street so she could make it to her sister's wedding. It was very moving. But they were tears of joy.

When I realised that my beautiful presssscious had a 3 inch crack on its LCD screen and was basically useless I sobbed like a frickin baby. I hadn't taken the time to translate the warranty but I was guessing that "being stepped on and crushed" wasn't covered in the manufacturer's guarantee. And as you can imagine these little babies don't come cheap, there was no way we could afford to just pick up another one to replace it.

I took it into Bic Camera and pessimistically inquired about repairs, to discover that for just over a third of the price of a new unit they could maybe replace the screen. While it was still expensive I decided to go ahead with it anyway - I had had a taste of the ultimate Japanese study tool and I couldn't go back to door-stopper tomes again.

2 weeks later I showed up, half-expecting the sales assistant to hand my dictionary back to me, shake his head and apologise for not being able to mend such serious damage. But this is Japan so you always know to expect something out of the ordinary.

"Here you are, here's a new replacement dictionary."

Was "being stepped on" covered in the warranty? Were they unable to repair the screen and felt bad so gave me a replacement one instead? I didn't stop to ask.

I just said thankyou very much and got the hell out of there before he changed his mind.

Now, what's the kanji for "lucky bastard" ?