Did you know that Sony products in Japan don’t offer multiple languages? An employee at Bic Camera told me the menus and instructions are only in Japanese… AH HA! Maybe that’s why a lot of Sony products are cheaper than what I am used to in America!
I just bought a Sony DSC-T70. Mainly because it’s small, it’s fast, it has internal zoom, and I’m satisfied with the image quality. The menu is pretty slick. There are nice icons, lots of Katakana, and I also downloaded the English manual form Sony’s website. All it took to get used to it was going through the settings, reading the Katakana, and memorizing a little of the manual. Now I’m golden and I’ve saved about $50. I mean… um… ¥5000…
If you’re interested in this camera:
You can download the English manual and get specs here.
You can read a review here.
And here’s a nice hands on review.
I really can’t bring myself to buy anything Sony these days. I think my discussed started back when they started that stupid memory stick crap. But I am guessing Sony is crazy popular over there.
To me it seems that Sony is a little more popular in Japan than the U.S. but not by much. I’ve had good experiences with Sony so that’s why I am sticking with them.
You dealt with the no English menu deal better than I did. Bic Camera in Shinjuku, Tokyo lost a sale in February because all Sanyo Xacti HD700 HD digital video cameras only have Japanese menus. To me that’s ludicrous, how much more effort is it to make it a multi-lingual device?
So I ordered one from Amazon in the U.S., had it shipped to my friend’s APO in Kanagawa, and got it in hand for a full ¥12,000 less than I would have paid at Bic (already on sale there, a rare sale for them to have).
How many languages does my imported Xacti from the U.S. have? 13! Japanese included!
I would really love to have a Sanyo representative explain this to me.
Jason - They already have multi-language menus for their products shipped worldwide so I thought the same thing, why not have the menu on everything? I was thinking about it lately, and I know there’s a lot of work done in translating the manuals and menus into other languages, so maybe they release it in Japan first and then they release it everywhere else.