Japanese magazines

I need to set aside more time to read - I've only flicked through most of these even though I am spending about 7,000 yen on reading material every month.
Japanese mags are great for the latest news - packed to the brim with images and photos but there is something that you seldom find in them - bad reviews.

Getting along in Japan is all about who you know and what people think of you. If Hobby Japan for example went and wrote a bad review for a Fix Figuration and stated that the legs fall off easily - then thats going to spoil things - the relation between them and Bandai - they probably wont get anymore exclusives. That may affect sales of the magazine because there are not any cool images of the latest Fix. It would probably also affect sales of the Fix in question. So folks over here like to keep things cushty.
So as a consumer in Japan - you generally wont get any quality reviews of just about anything - quality as in mentioning the bad bits. Take Famitsu - the weekly gaming magazine for example - in the 10 years or so that I have been reading that mag, I have yet to see a game get a rating of less than 4 out of 10. They trying to tell me that there are no shite games around?

So what do poor consumers do when they want real reviews? Well they go along to websites like Kakaku.com where consumers can read other consumers comments on electronic products. At first, companies like Sony threw a fit at what Kakaku.com were doing claiming that negative consumer feedback on their products were going to negatively affect sales. The outcome was that Kakaku.com is now *the* place to go to look for electronics and Sony actually pay them to advertise on kakaku.com.
The other place to look for real feedback on products or services is 2 Channel where you can find a thread on just about everything.
Below: Need to read someday...