I just signed up for a Japanese psn account. The ps3 is region free, so it can play games from any region. You can then access the playstation store that corresponds with the region your account is for. At the time I had my dictionaries at my side, and made my way through the signup process that way, but in your case, I recommend checking out Jew Wario's tutorial, which you can view here: http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2012/05/ ... mful-park/
You don't actually need a real address. I made one up by typing random hiragana symbols. It asks you for a city, so just choose one from the list(you don't need to understand it, just pick one). Paying for digital content is pretty straightforward too. There are websites that sell psn cards from various regions, and if you have a credit card, you can order one. You can have one delivered, but I recommend finding a site that sends the code to you via email. It's a lot quicker, since it can take anywhere from a couple minutes, to maybe 10, as opposed to having to wait to have a physical card delivered(which you'd just be recycling afterwards anyway). Since there are multiple websites that sell psn cards, I recommend shopping around for the one that gives you the best deal. I would recommend having some idea as to how much you want in your wallet beforehand, so that you can get everything you want, and not have any left over. I suppose it's one thing to have just enough left over to buy a ps1 classic, but it's another to have 100 or 200 yen left over that you can't do anything with, which would be a total waste of money.
Browsing another region's playstation store is kind of neat, and I highly recommend giving it a try. If you're unsure, maybe try signing up for a UK account, or if you're from the UK, maybe try signing up for a US account. Both countries speak English, so you won't have to deal with the language barrier. There are a select few titles, like Malicious, that you can get from a UK account, but not from a NA account. Be weary of PAL ps1 games though, as it may not recognize the output for your NTSC hd tv(Japanese ps1 classics are NTSC, so they don't have that problem). Other psn downloads shouldn't be a problem though.
The psp is also region free(and UK ps1 games work on it), but when you copy a game over to it from another account, it changes the account activation, and only games from that account will work(so all your downloaded NA games won't). You can cheat the system by deleting, and re-copying a mini whenever you want to change your account activation, but it's up to you to decide if it's worth the time and effort. It doesn't have to be a mini, but I recommend going with something with a small file size that won't take very long to copy over. In general, I tend to avoid UK ps1 classics, and psp games from any region besides my own, and play anything I can on my ps3, since I can be signed in with my NA account, and play games from another one of my accounts. It's also worth noting, that ps1 games may not recognize a NA memory card, or a memory card created by a NA account, but you can get around that by creating a memory card from the psn account you downloaded the game from. I'd recommend labeling it accordingly, so you don't mix it up with your NA memory card. Data from any other psn download can be saved normally though.
22 Jun 2012, 5:15 pm
