Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Tokyo Tower replaces Private Ocean, Film @ 11


Lit & Unlit

Sometimes, having multiple Japanese "appliances" (appliance being defined as anything that has a plug/AC adapter) can be a bit of a bitch. I think my first such device was Banpresto's Aquapict, which was a small tank full of jellyfish (クラゲ) with two motors at the top that made the fake jellyfish "swim". Unfortunately, I neglected to think about the voltage differences between the US and Japan (120~100) and one of the motors blew up. (It's odd, because I've dealt with a Japanese game system or two before and I knew about the voltage difference there)

The next time I did a little better, I got a fairly expensive, certain "drink-pouring robot" that you may have seen, as well as my Sega Toys' Private Ocean "Fish Clock". At this point, I got two power convertors from a website based in New Jersey, I believe. One worked beautifully, and for some reason I still don't know, the other either didn't work, or was blown up. My place's electrical infrastructure isn't exactly what you would call "new", and I thought perhaps the other convertor suffered a power surge or something. Anyway, the other one has been working really well with my fish clock for over a year now. The only problem is, now I can only plug in one thing that needs a convertor at a time, am not keen on buying another convertor that may or may not work (or overload the socket and catch my house on fire) and the other convertors I'd run across weren't cheap.

So when my 1/500 scale Tokyo Tower arrived I was forced to decommission the fish clock or sit an unlit Tokyo Tower in my closet. My Private Ocean kept me up at night, as its backlight was brighter than the one on my 40" TV, lol. So now, in place of my Private Ocean, sits an amazing "little" replica of Tokyo Tower.

2 comments :

Billy W said...

What are you going to do when the Sky Tree is completed?

Takara said...

Tear down and reconstruct? It *does* look infinitely more futuristic than TT =)

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