I can’t say I’d had too much desire to get an iPhone as I use the internet enough without checking Facebook and Twitter in between lessons. However, when my phone charger broke a few months ago I thought it was maybe a good chance to make the switch. At the same time I also got an iPad2 as Softbank (the Japanese mobile phone operator) had a special offer for them with the iPhone.

Despite initially struggling with the new way of typing mails (known as text messages in just about every other country in the world!) I soon got used to both that and the automatic error correction which can still be annoying sometimes but all-in-all the service probably works more in my favour than against it.

One reason I wanted an iPhone was for the map service which will hopefully be very useful when I embark on my cycling trips around Tokyo in search of certain places such as filming locations. However, I am still yet to use or even try using the maps feature as I don’t really like the idea of being tracked by google in any way.

Certainly not essential but adding to life’s satisfaction is the ability to access the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, hotmail, Google, YouTube, iTunes and a host of other things whilst on the move. The app which I’ve used the most has been the TuneIn Radio one which enables me to listen to hundreds of stations around the world. Needless to say, I am more than happy to settle for just listening to the BBC stations with the added bonus that 5 Live’s football commentaries don’t cut out at kick-off as they do on the BBC iPlayer.

The iPad was a bit of a godsend while I was in Paris, Edinburgh, London and my hometown over the festive period as many places and friends houses have wi-fi in Europe unlike Japan where, apart from McDonalds, very few places seem to offer free wi-fi service. When you’re inside its much nicer to use this contraption for surfing the net due to its clipboard size. It was great for watching UK television online whilst I was back in my homeland.

With my family having been on Skype for many years its been so nice to be able to chat to them via video on the iPad which I was never able to do on my old laptop which couldn’t handle that particular application.

The major downside of the iPhone and iPad is that Apple didnt allow them to work with Flash Player meaning that I couldn’t watch streaming of TV programmes and films as well as content put on many websites. Furthermore, the iPad is not really convenient for typing anything more than a sentence or two on social media sites. For these two reasons and the fact that my old, ageing laptop had pretty much conked out I decided to splash out last weekend on a MacBook Pro laptop having got used to using my girlfriends Mac. One big benefit was a very easy way of capturing screenshots of some of the various movie locations which I visit thereby enabling one to show a comparison of my photo in the modern day and the film-shot I try to replicate.