Josh Daugherty, Japanese Correspondent

Getting a Wii has been much harder to get than I expected.

Ah, life in Japan. All of the newest tech gadgets, before the rest of the world for your purchase. Enter the Wii, released in America first as with the original DS. Seeing as how I waited… couldn’t snag a Wii pre-order due to my life apart from the US, I needed to await the online opportunities. It has been a very trying time. I have had to refresh about ten websites for a couple of weeks. The day finally came around Thanksgiving, six days after launch, Black Friday. I proceeded to a website, realized that they only had the Wii "bundle" available. All right, at least I’ve snatched the Wii. I created my order and I was done. Now just to wait…

It is the beginning of December, a little over a week since my Wii bundle purchase; I am still waiting for the USPS to get the box to my APO address. I have received some of the games as part of my bundle, but they are useless due to the hardware not arriving yet. The Japanese Wii launch was yesterday, and supposedly they are all sold out. The retailers that I frequent had their entire inventory of the Wii exhausted on day one. They did however have plenty of　Hajimete no Wii (Wii Play), with a pack-in Wiimote, ready for my purchase. One purchase that I did make, due to all of the online banter of shortages, was for my Wii Component Cables. I was surprised that they were readily available and for just a little over $21 (¥2500).

I just wish the USPS would hurry with my package so I can join the rest of the world, since my Wii may not show up until around the European launch.

UPDATE: I am still waiting. It has been a little more than three weeks since my online order. I have however purchased a Wiimote, Nunchuk and Classic controller. (With the translated Yen rate, I bought all three for about $56.)