I have to give props to Apple on one thing.
I got into hanafuda, I watched Summer Wars, and I found a story about a Summer Wars themed hanafuda game being made for the iphone. Awesome, but that story was all I had found. The app was not on the itunes store despite the article saying it should be out in April of last year. A few google searches later and I come across a app piracy site and it has the game listed, screenshots and everything. Turns out it was only released on the Japanese store.
So it became my mission to get on the Japanese itunes store. Its pretty easy, really. Log out, change your region to Japan, and there you are. Making a new japanese account was also pretty simple. I found a free app I wanted to try and it prompted me to make a new account. I made a new gmail address for it, faked the physical address, but all the steps to signing up are in english. 10 minutes later (I had to look up the japanese postal codes) and I was downloading a free app from the store.
I was worried that I wouldn't be able to sync this new app to my ipod without having it wipe out all my other apps. This is where I have to give Apple credit. I can sync apps from both accounts onto my ipod, no problem. I guess because my machine is authorized for both accounts, but its still a nice thing to have. Now I can order a japanese itunes gift card from jlist and buy stuff on there if I want.