We tried so hard to do the right thing by the environment and our electricity bills by making do with just the upstairs one, but in the end, the hottest Japanese summer on record finally got the better of us and we capitulated. And if it seemed a bit silly to buy an air conditioner right near the end of summer, well, the weather has just been getting hotter and hotter, with the top temp recording a new PB of 36 degrees all this week, and some people say this heatwave will continue right through to winter, obliterating autumn along the way, so it looks like we’re going to get good use out of it. Plus it works as a heater in winter (what’s that again?) which means we can now retire the ever so slightly smelly kerosene heater.

So no more 35 degrees inside the lounge room every day. No more inferno in the kitchen every time we use the stove. Finally we can start cooking again, not to mention hanging out in the lounge room instead of all camping in the upstairs office.

But there’s just one thing: our shiny new device is equipped with this wonderful new technology that scans the room constantly to detect where the people are so it can create a more pleasant air flow. Supposedly. My theory is that it’s part of secret program by the Japanese CIA to have scanning air-conditioners installed in every room across the land a la 1984. In fact I reckon they deliberately concocted this year’s heatwave just to make everyone buy air conditioners with people scanners in them.

And how does it scan the room? From this beady little eye, located right in the middle near the bottom:

The eyeball sweeps lazily back and forth all day long, left to right, right to left, watching us go about our business, constantly evaluating our movements for its so-called “learning” function. I’m convinced it’s evil. What is it thinking, I wonder to myself. What does it do with this “learned” information? Probably biding its time until the MACHINES TAKE OVER and deadly gas starts spurting forth out of those little louvres (and directed straight at us, since it knows where we are).

On a more immediate note, I worry that if I change position in the loungeroom it will get angry and glare at me like HAL in 2001:

“Not again! I just went and adjusted all the settings and now he’s gone and moved again! Sit still why can’t you!”

Heaven knows what it must think of Felix playing with his trains.

I have to admit that the eye is rather clever. There are a couple of buttons called Blow That Cool Air On Me* and Keep That Airflow Offa Me* and the machine works out where you are in the room and adjusts its little louvres as you’ve instructed. But that in itself is kind of spooky when you think about it.

You can of course turn the Evil Eye off, but I suspect that would make it even more angry and maybe it would contact Mitsubishi wirelessly, or report us to the JCIA as “foreigners of interest” since no doubt it’s already worked out that we haven’t got black hair.

At least we can escape into the kitchen like Winston Smith where hopefully it can’t see us behind the partition. Or does it have built-in X-ray technology too that can find us behind walls? I’ve got a funny feeling about our newest addition to the family…

When I first arrived I had to get an evil pre-paid mobile phone because I didn’t have the proper visa. Actually the phone itself wasn’t too bad — especially compared to the antiquated old thing I was using in Australia — but the idea was always to upgrade to a shiny new one as soon as the visa came through. (At one stage I was considering getting an iPhone because the phone company was running a special campaign in January, but unfortunately that finished before my visa came through.)

However the new phone I got on Friday is a pretty good consolation prize. First of all, it looks like a phone on one side and like a camera on the other; when you open up the screen and flip it around, it turns into an 8 MP camera with a screen on the back. You can also pull out its tiny little aerial and watch TV on it. It has all the usual features like the internet, emails, games and music, news and weather updates; but unlike my old phone, you can actually see what’s happening and read the text, which is kind of handy. It also has Japanese and English dictionaries. It can scan and convert Japanese and English text (such as a newspaper), and can even read a business card and enter the details in your address book. You can store money in it and use it as a credit card to pay for things, or to go through the turnstiles at the train station. You can even link it to your kid’s phone and track their movements by GPS (Ruby’s going to love that).

There are probably heaps of other things that you can do with it but I’ve only had 24 hours so far. (Oh yes, I almost forgot: it also has a nice bright light on the back that you can use as a torch.)

But the best thing is that this beastie is already considered old technology (the latest model has a 12 MP camera as opposed to a pathetic 8 MB and comes in lots of different colours), which means that the monthly repayments are precisely ¥0.

So it feels good to have finally joined the mobile technolgy revolution, especially as I was lagging so far behind in Australia. I really felt in need of a new gadget, and Japan is definitely the place to satisfy that need.

Dunno what I’ll do when I get bored with the phone though; I might have to buy one of those new iPad thingies.