3. The Japanese are more prone to follow trends. Many of the devices you can find in Japan but not here reflect some hot trend we haven't caught on to yet (and some that we may not—the electronic equivalents of pet rocks). In Japan, electronics buyers consider trendy features necessary, even if they'll never use them. The technology Bluetooth, which allows laptops to wirelessly upload movies from your camcorder or to connect to the Internet using your cell phone, is much bigger in Japan than here. Same for 802.11b Wi-Fi wireless networks, which are slowly catching on in the United States but have taken off like wildfire in Japan's densely packed urban areas.
4. The Japanese are more feature-conscious than price-conscious. Japanese consumers want the smallest, lightest, most feature-rich laptop they can proudly show off to their friends. Americans are more likely to crow about the great deal they got. Take this test. If you could get a full-featured 3-pound laptop for $1,999, how much more would you pay for a 2.5-pounder? Or to get it an inch smaller? If your eyes glazed over just thinking about that question, you are in the American majority. If your answer was closer to anything, break out the sushi. In your soul you are more Japanese than American.
There's some good news for the Japanese-at-heart gear-head who demands the best at any price. Americans can get their hands on the Libretto and on a dozen or so other hot laptops at Dynamism.com, a specialty importer that focuses on Japan-only consumer electronics. (Dynamism lent me the Libretto.) They buy the laptops in Japan, install a U.S. version of Windows, and configure them with the correct hardware drivers (sometimes a nontrivial operation—drivers for Japan-only hardware do not always work on U.S. versions of Windows), then send them to you. They'll even install a U.S. keyboard on some models (mine had one), though the normal Japanese keyboard has English characters and works fine. Their not-inconsiderable markup (about 30 percent) covers all taxes, duty, and shipping fees. If required, they'll ship your laptop to Japan and back for warranty work, and they'll even send you driver updates for free.
