Caleb saves the Xbox

As you may have noticed, Caleb and I are updating more often. We worked out a system that should have us updating twice a week. Caleb posting at the beginning of the week, and myself posting at the end of the week. We didn't mention it until we were sure we could pull it off.

Anyway, the post scheduled for this week was "Culture Shock Part 2: Powdered Awful", but it will have to wait until next week. This week, ya'll have to hear how Caleb saved the Xbox.

I'd like to start by pointing out how important our Xbox is. It allows us to play video games, which we both love. We can talk to people back home over Xbox live. Also, as of this moment, it is the only device we own capable of playing DVDs region coded for the US. (My computer will play Japanese DVDs and Caleb's computer doesn't want to play anything.)

We love our Xbox. What we don't understand is why, when we love it so much, did it red-ring on us. Ahhhh the red ring of death. When we went onto the Xbox support webpage, we were given some advice on how to fix red-ring. The advice basically boiled down to : Disconnect the power supply.... now reconnect the power supply... is there still a red ring? Yes? Well then your machine's totaled, send it in for repairs.

Sending it in for repairs is a bit easier when you're not on the wrong side of the globe.
Even though the Xbox isn't very heavy, it wouldn't be surprising if postage ran somewhere around $50 for a one way trip. Oh and the repair itself had a standard $100 price tag stamped on it. So we were looking at $200 dollars for this little procedure.

Go type "xbox" into google. Somewhere within the first five results should be an offer to sell you one. You see what the price is for a new X box is? $190. It was going to be more expensive to get our current x box repaired than it would be to buy a new one.

Okay, so we consider buying a new one. Bad news, if we purchase an X box anywhere nearby, it will be a Japanese X box. A few quick searches online and we are confronted with the fact that a Japanese Xbox will not play American games.

Things were beginning to look pretty bleak. Then, in one of the search results, I noticed mention of X box repair centers in Japan.

"Do you think that a Japanese repair center could fix an American X box?"

"Well, we can try", Caleb said.

So we find the X box support number on the Japanese X box page. Caleb calls them up and has a long, difficult conversation in Japanese. At the end of said conversation we know three things:
1) They can repair American machines
2) In Japan, you don't have to mail the X box to the repair center. Someone comes to your door (Within the next 24 hours!) to pick it up.
3) Our limited warranty works in Japan (somehow) and will cover the costs of the repair work.

Sometimes this country is absolutely wonderful. I'm not sure how long it will take to repair our X box ( The American website said two weeks or more). After seeing how well they handled everything else though, I'm sure it won't be too long.