November 28th, 2023

November is here.

As usual, Japan imports have hit.

This flip phone! It only costed me roughly $7 USD. It's the Gratina KYF39, released in August 2019. It comes with Android 5.1 and only 8GB of internal storage.

Flip phones in general are still a thing, mostly for old people or people who don't like smartphones. If you go to your local phone dealer, you'll probably find atleast 1 flip phone on display. Japan is no different.

The seller has said this phone is SIM-locked, so I can't use my phone provider with it. I don't think it will work anyways, as I believe it doesn't play well with any bands avaliable here. I compared it with my own phone and it only shared a single 2G band, and 2G is soon to be put off next year. Boo.

Photo shrunk for file size restrictions.

The phone's resolution is 480x854. The camera takes photos of a resolution up to 3264x2448.

As far as I know, this phone doesn't come with any app store. To install APKs, you will have to transfer the package over Bluetooth and install it when it asks you to. Installing a proper file explorer app will let you install APKs without needing to use Bluetooth. With Android 5.0, there's a small pool of apps you can install that's only getting smaller every passing day.

This phone doesn't have a touch screen, but apps that use touch screen gestures can still work with the pointer function. Holding down the # key will bring up a cursor that you can move around with the directional keys. You can tap and swipe with it. Very weird and a requirement for some apps.

To a lot of people, having a phone this old and without service would be useless. It is useless! It's really stylish though. The shell is really smooth and the outer screen, while small, looks cool. I removed my straps from my Switch and attached it to my phone. One of these days, it'll grow large enough to become a weapon.

I also got this e-amusement pass. It's not one for the modern machines which use NFC passes. This card is for the older machines which use magnetic passes. The magnetic cards haven't been used since the late-2000s, I believe.

Considering how cheap these passes usually are, I might buy some more. I went to a hangout that had e-amusement passes up on the wall. I'll do the same.

This is a pop'n music book. This is THE pop'n music book! It's for all ages!

This looks to be an old artbook similar to the other ones published by Konami. It's a bunch of character artwork.

The first game to support the e-amusement service was pop'n music 9. You can find the pass I got in the batch.

There is also interviews. This is Atsushi Shindo, an artist who isn't in pop'n music anymore because he plagarised stuff. Haha.

Next are the games I imported.

First is Kirby Super Star Deluxe. I remember playing this years ago, never really knew what the game was.

The game has all the save slots filled. They played pretty close to the end.

Second is Online Games: Dai Guruguru Onsen.

Guruguru Onsen is an old SEGA tabletop series. It was released around the Dreamcast and was focused on playing tabletop board or card games with others online. Dai Guruguru Onsen is one of the few times the series left the Dreamcast, also releasing on PC.

The opendice servers have long been shut down. There's even a video of the last minutes of the service being online. When the service was still alive, you could play cross-platform matches! Dreamcast, PS2, and PC players can play the games with each other. It's very interesting.

Look at me try UNO. The game has a lot of rules you can change.

I love the presentation of this game. You create a character and a lot of the objects bounce and move a lot. The game has a soundtrack from the first title on Dreamcast too. If it was 2002, I'd probably be playing this a lot online.

Looking at the game's archive files, it seems like this is a modified port of Guruguru Onsen 2. It still has the GD-ROM graphic and Manatee driver file, even though the music is streamed rather than sequenced.

Third is Ookami. It was sold by a seller I frequent and nobody was bidding on it for a while. So I won it.

I still have my old save from years ago. I should finish it one of these days...

Lastly is a new BEMANI addition! Beatmania IIDX 12: HAPPY SKY! Happy Sky is where the series refreshed to be like the modern games we have now, implementing the 12 level difficulty scale.

I would post a video but it's been a while since I played IIDX... I'm having trouble with 10s...

Next is some ABYSS CDs! I'm pretty close to completing her discography.

Kissshite hoshi katta is her 4th single. I skipped this one as I didn't find a cheap listing at the time. This song is pretty good.

Yume no Hate is her second to last single. It was also her last single to be released with Tokuma Japan Communication.

Recently, I found out ABYSS sung a song for a children's show called Mushimaru Q, which in itself was a sub-series of Nandemo Q. It was just a show focused around animals and had quizzes and parody songs about those animals. For one of those songs, ABYSS had sung one about kangaroos, named Kangaroo Jump. A recording is avaliable on niconico. The song is a parody of Canned Heat.

So I bought one of the albums for this show. It contains Kangaroo Jump's full version among other songs from the program.

While Kangaroo Jump's normal version only lasts for two and a half minutes, the full version lasts for four minutes.

With Yume no hate and Kissshite hoshi katta, I only need ABYSS' final single, WHY, to complete her single discography. I just need two anime soundtracks to have her entire discography too. I think it's funny how one commercial got me to buy a majority of her CDs.

My Japan shipments have been slowing down. I think I bought basically everything I ever wanted. I still have a lot in the warehouse right now, but they'll be posted up months from now because I'm shipping them over surface. I can't wait to write what I bought recently.

That's it for this post. I didn't have much to talk about for now. It's been a pretty slow month. I've been out visiting family this month.