Yeah, a run to Japan can be a pretty cool climax to a campaign. I've never run a full campaign in Tokyo, mainly because I think it would be very difficult to pull off, without it just coming across as Seattle with different street names. I'm so used to the culture, politics, and general "tone" of Seattle that it's tough for me to keep from falling back on it when forced to ad-lib or come up with something on relatively short notice.

I do really enjoy occasional jaunts to other plex's though. It can add a lot of spice if done right. You can focus on the broad stereotypes but still have it come across as cool and exotic. Meeting at bunraku parlours, different companies working as cops, ect. all adds a lot of cool factor but moderation has always been the key for me.

To be fair, I love the setting books as a general rule though. Even if you never run a campaign in the city, it's still cool to have PC's, NPC's and other bits of different parts of the world trickle in. The setting books, if nothing else give pretty cool character ideas and ways to offer glimpses into the broader world, which makes the entire campaign more convincing.

For example. My current character is a combat hacker who literally stepped off the plane from Osaka and got his first glimpse of Seattle on the first session. Playing someone who grew up in a very traditional Japanese Yakuza clan is really fun. Since his clan was wiped out at the hands of a rival, and a traitor within he's made it his life's goal to hunt that traitor down. He's followed him to Seattle after undergoing that gene replacement therapy and so he's provided a lot of plot hooks too.

Edit:
Since the team is still to fresh on the street to have access to a resource like Shadowland (er jackpoint) he relies on his Osaka connections to get information that might otherwise be unaccessible. I try my best to put as many little quirks into him as possible that make him seem more "Japanese", a lot of it is stereotypes but it helps make him seem different in my mind at least. He never gets angry, always takes himself very seriously (well I got a little goofy on the last run but that might have been the cold medication), he's the sort of guy who'll apologize for shooting you if he has nothing against you personally. Would I want to run an entire campaign with characters like that? I don't really think so but he's fun for something exotic.

Yah. *bangs his plate on the table*

Judging by recent releases, almost certainly within the next week, and possibly tomorrow.

But I have today off.

You're not really selling the book there AH. I know a lot of people (myself included) were really looking forward to the Nippon section because it has always been an important part of the setting but it's never been really well described. A good in-depth loction section on the second largest sprawl on the planet was really needed. If you're telling me that it looks like a commitee phoned it in that would make me sad.

Meanwhile I don't really think that the LA storyline is salvageable. It was dumb and perplexing back in CFS and every time it has been revisited in any way it has gotten astoundingly worse. YotC was confusing and retarded. The SR4 main book's take was world destroying, and the blurb in Street Magic was even worse. The LA section could be made out of liquid gold by a master crafter and it would still slump over because a foundation of shit simply cannot hold.

So if you're telling me that the setting which is just kind of "meh" and exists mostly to fill page count is the one which had unlimited possibility, and the one which is inspired and well focused is the one which is already constrained by a backstory so bad that it creates a palpable miasma that taints and corrodes the rest of the setting - then you're making me very very sad.

-Frank