hey all,
I believe I mentioned the trip John and I took into Akihabara earlier this week. The trip itself bears a little further elaboration.
I've been looking for an mp3 player, but I actually wanted something to play my ogg vorbis files. I was prepared to settle for a Sony Walkman, and convert everything over to mp3, but at the electronics shop they didn't have a card for that. How you buy one of these items in Japan is there is a stack of cards next to the item, and you take the card for the item you want and bring that up to the counter. They didn't have one for the Sony Walkman I was looking at, so I started looking around for other options, and hit upon the Cowon S9. This is made by a Korean company, and actually plays Ogg Vorbis files without any problem. They had cards for that, so I took one and went to the counter to ask if they had The 40 Year Old Virgin and Fight Club on Blu-Ray. After determining that they didn't, I said "Ok, just give me this, then." It turned out that they didn't have the Cowon S9 in stock either, despite having cards for the item.
So John and I stopped by a different shop, and went through the same thing. The Cowon S9 was $50 more expensive here, but they had it in stock. I started charging the batteries as soon as I got home that Tuesday night, but I actually haven't been able to play with it until today.
I just put about 25% of my music collection on it, and it sounds great. It is pretty easy to use so far, but I haven't really done a whole lot with it yet. Apparently, it can be used to read books, play movies, and view pictures, aside from playing music.
Cheers,
