I dunno, it's never happened to me in London. It's the opposite of crawly ime, which I appreciate a lot.

Brooks wrote:

I dispute the idea that J-culture is actually exotic at all in 2014.

For someone like me living in Belfast it is exotic - I can only imagine what it looks like to a Weatherspoon's drinking, Gregg's pie eating small English town dweller.

Of course an actual trip there might prove your point to me but I'd say I would enjoy a trip; not least of all to peruse and pickup various older console related goodness in an Akihabara outlet.

Brooks wrote:

Difference between service and sales you see. Service should be invisible, what's happening there is sales. You can be commercially aware and upsell without pestering someone

And in any case, if I'm literally in a store it's to showroom a thing I'm going to pull off a webvendor anyway.

You would think by now that shops would have realised this to be the case and would reform themselves into a web-selling, bricks and mortar showrooming setup. 

I believe Richer Sounds to be pretty close to that - have heard shop assistants refer people to the RS website to actually raise an order because of a better price.

 Even allowing the online order in shop if necessary for delivery to the door step. A mirror image of "the click and collect" setup that some are doing now. No reason why both methods can't exist side by side.

Aye. I like to feel and touch a product before buying on the whole. Depends on the product of course.

And I am prepared to pay a bit extra when good in-shop advice is offered instead of slouching off to a keyboard. Many say I'm a fool for doing that but I can live with it.

The buzz of getting something new has a rapidly diminishing half-life. It isn't good for the individual or the society.

Specifically I'm thinking back to when I used a listening room in a hifi shop. Old pre-owned bookshops are another marvel.

 You're right of course - your typical early 20s wiseguy won't know too much but some shops still have old hands - not many sadly - as that is usually an independant outlet thing, and they don't have the buying power either.

I enjoy walking into certain shops and surprising a young'un when a hefty grey like me proves to be knowledgable.

Brooks wrote:

If I'm just going to be roped into smallfuck blather just to confirm I am in fact a functioning human being...

Yes, but with that laser beam going through your head, people are bound to question that...

Brooks wrote:

Well, I don't think the stats quite support it yet, the percentage of sales probably still weights towards physical retail, particularly for anything you can't download.

The stats that I've heard for Bristol were very surprising to me, but I don't how much fudge. They've online-spending accounting for less than 15% over the Christmas period. 'Course, that might include food, with luxuries being far closer to a tie, but stuff like the recent telly-grabbing, Black Friday hoo-ha speaks firmly in favour of continued in-shop trade.

The interesting thing is that those BF deals were regular online prices at best. Albeit from smaller online retailers. Because punters are still invested in the perceived trust of the big boys.

I've had the same problem as Brooks. I don't frequent pro 'hoods as a guest, but on those rare occasions, I'm uncomfortably aware of what hard work I am. I don't mean to be, I just don't like talking about myself because I'm dull, and it usually seems impertinent to ask others about their lives. I mean, the key thing to talk about is what we do, and there they are.

It's mostly a case of who beat who, innit? Or rather, who sat on a hill watching his men beat another hill-sitting who's men.

Mm. I've been quite taken aback by the attitude I've encountered with the Japanese on historical war crimes and racism to other east Asian nations, I.e. Koreans and Chinese. Just yesterday it was a bit of a lol joke at a Xmas party that one of the attendees (japanese) hates Koreans. This person has Korean friends and has visited there, so quite how much of it is real hatred compared to, say, a more jocular thing such as our distaste for the Frenchman I can't quite tell, but just try bringing up the question of reparations for wwII crimes to Korea and the reaction you get is quite something, including a fair chunk of blame and accusation levied at Korea for allegedly trying to exploit Japan.

Anyway, the details covered in that article are quite shocking; I had no idea about the secrecy law stuff. It's depressing that the more I look into the politics of a country I grew up loving, the nastier it seems. It's important to stress that I get on very well in general with all the Japanese I know, but yeah don't start talking politics with them, is what I've learned.

Japanese voters in their own words. Pretty standard bunch of 1st-world anxieties really.

@nick a quick wiki reads that the Korean government actually spent most of the original compensation on infrastructure development without telling anyone. There's been a movement in Korea to sue the gov for a fair while.

And they've given a good deal amount of dosh to SK already. Not that it's easy to put a price on that kind of suffering.