I'm leaving for Japan on Friday and I borrowed a musicPower iPod charger from my cousins. I was told by a sales associate at a RadioShack that Japan has the same outlet plug as the US and that the voltages are close (Japan is 100 the US is 110-120) and there aren't any converters for voltages that are so close and I'll be fine plugging my appliances into the outlets without an adapter/converter. Then I went to a website that said there are converters out there for Japanese outlets but some appliances work fine on certain ranges of voltages. Is that true? I don't want to blow myself up. I really need to know as quickly as humanly possible. I leave Friday!!! Thank you in advance.
Typically all appliances work fine within the +/-20V range, so you should be alright. They actually changed the voltage in whole of Europe in 90s without anyone noticing it (UK and some other European countries were using 240V and most of the continent was using 220V and now all of EU is using 230V and afaik, nobody had to change any of their appliances due this switch). Only problem seems to be the frequency of the power in Japan, according to Wikipedia: "In Japan, the electrical power supply to households is at 100 V. Eastern and northern parts of Honshū (including Tokyo) and Hokkaidō have a frequency of 50 Hz, whereas western Honshu (including Nagoya, Osaka, and Hiroshima), Shikoku, Kyūshū and Okinawa operate at 60 Hz." So, make sure that your charger has the right Hz for the area you're going to (Canada & U.S. use 60Hz, whereas virtually all 230V countries use 50Hz) or alternatively that the frequency can be changed, if you're going to 100V / 50Hz region in Japan with U.S. 115V/60Hz charger.
