Masses of people gathered outside electrical stores in Tokyo last night to try and get their mits on one of the first Playstation 3 consoles.
Photos of the chaos are here, here and here.

The PSP has fared incredibly poorly here compared to the Nintendo DS and DS Lite, so it’ll be interesting to see how the PS3 will compete against Nintendo’s Wii when it launches in Japan in early December.

The Wii certainly looks a lot more hands-on and fun – Nintendo are bringing something new to the table with the motion sensitive remote control and aiming the console at a family market whereas the PS3 seems to be targetted squarely at the seasoned gamer, possibly as an upgrade from a PS2.

Personally, I already have a PS2 and feel that games are stuck in a bit of a generic rut at the moment, so the Wii is looking a lot more attractive to me just because it’s so different.

See the following official sites for more information in English:
Playstation 3
Wii

You may or may not have heard about the huge power cut in Tokyo this morning, which affected around 800,000 households and caused huge disruption to businesses and the transport system.

The power cut was caused by a crane being transported up the old Edo river on a barge that hit some electrical cables running over the water.
Seems like the operator made a gross misjudgment about how much space he had to play with! Who would have thought that this could cause such a catastrophe?!
We too lost power for about an hour but no damage was done.

Luckily most people are on their summer holiday this week, due it being the festival of  O-Bon. The outcome could have been a lot worse if it was a regular workday.

Read the BBC report here.