For the most part i love living in another country - the language, the culture and the food are just some of the wonderful things i get to experience. There are some elements that cause me concern though, such as videogame purchases.

To buy games i can do so one of three ways; first i can simply buy them from a regular Japanese store, but this can be risky as not all games have English options, however with some research i am able to find the ones that do, but the other problem with this is that it is much more difficult for newer games due to the lack of information. My second option is to visit an import store, and this option is my current preferred method. The benefit of visiting these stores is that i can pay in cash, i can guarantee that my purchases have English options and i can choose which country's version to buy. My third option is to buy online. This is the easiest option but the games take around 2-3 weeks to arrive, but on the other hand i can choose which country's version to buy.

Now, back in the UK my go to console had always been the Xbox 360 despite owning both the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Whenever a mulitplatform game came out i was sure to buy it for the Xbox 360, but i won't go into details as to why but lets say i have a few good reasons.

After living where i am now for about 8 months i decided to once again get back into gaming. A frenzy of research and information gathering led me to understand that the PS3 would be my best choice; the Xbox 360 is dying in Japan and the PS3's region free capabilities didn't limit me to the shelves of a Japanese video game store. So that was simple.

There is another problem though, and one that i hadn't anticipated or thought hard enough about to realise; DLC and online access is changing. I bought Resistance 3 in a Japanese store but i am limited to using my Japanese account as i must use an online passcode to play online, which ultimately locks me out of getting certain trophies. If this were a one off i wouldn't be so bothered, but with Batman: Arkham City and Uncharted 3 all using this same system it has become clear to me that simply having English isn't enough anymore; i have to do extra reason now to check for the online components. I am not happy with this new way forward but i understand why companies are doing it, and so this means that i just have one more thing to do before buying a game. Uhh....Oh well.....