Region-locking is dumb. While in japan I was hoping to accomplish a few things for my gaming habits. First was to play street fighter in an arcade. I did that, lost all of my games (never played SF4 before) and had fun. Second was to steal a copy of Wii Sports Resort on the 25th (release date), just before we came back to the states. It comes with Wii motion plus, and who cares if your waterski game is in Japanese, you move the handle and it goes. Unfortunately the Wii is region-locked so any Japanese games will not be playable on my American Wii. There are modding ways around it, but I am not as ambitious as Jason with my consoles. No big deal, maybe I would pick up a DSi here and then I can just learn the Japanese needed to guide the menus while still playing my games in English? Nope, the DSi is region locked as well, so any future games I purchase for that system will be unplayable unless they are imported from Japan. So I look into standard DS games . . . and they aren't region locked. I could by a new DS here and all my old shit would work. Or my current DS games would work on my DSi, but not any new games. After doing some research Nintendo is now ending what has been a decade long tradition of not being region-locked just in time for me to come to Japan and get screwed by it.
Thanks Nintendo, thanks a lot. I can still buy a charger and stylus to replace the ones I lost earlier this trip, and some games that are in Japanese (how much do I need to be able to speak to play the new Mario RPG?), but any new gen purposes are going to have to wait until I get back to the states.