I have a confession to make. I married a Facebook Fanatic. Sadly, Mrs. Expat has been revealed to be totally dependent on Facebook, Farmville, Petville, and Café World to get through her day.
While in the US, she was able to hide her shame by playing on her laptop whenever I wasn’t around. However, our recent move to Tokyo revealed all. Even though I had given her laptop access to our wireless network, she found that her favorite Facebook games would no longer work.
“Great,” I thought, “This is a good opportunity for her to go cold turkey on Café World.”
Unfortunately, her addiction had its claws in her too deep to allow such a simple solution. As noted in a previous post, I have a VPN setup using StrongVPN that allows us to view US-based streaming video sites (Hulu, CW, and theWB) on our computer here in Tokyo. Recently, after our weekly dose of “House, M.D.” I went to the kitchen for iced tea; upon my return, I was terrified to see Mrs. Expat playing her insidious Farmville game on MY computer.
“Look, honey,” she squealed, “Facebook works on this computer!” It was the happiest I had seen her in days. It melted my heart and I decided that if I couldn’t eliminate her Facebook cravings, I would have to give her a way to get her daily dose, without tying up my computer.
The obvious solution was to get another StrongVPN account for her to use on her laptop. I was ready to bite the extra $15.00 per month expense and went to the website to sign up. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have a new offer; I could add a second VPN account to my current account for only $2.00 extra per month. That’s a great deal; peace and quiet, no more computer sharing, and a happy wife. All for less than the price of a single Starbucks coffee.
So if your significant other is having Facebook withdrawal symptoms, I recommend that you set up a StrongVPN account to save your marriage.
You can access Facebook in Japan without a VPN, on any computer (unless you're on a private network that has it blocked, but this only typically happens in schools or certain workplaces depending). This includes all of the games and everything else Facebook-related.
Hi Ashley, Thanks for the comment and the update.
My original post was in 2010. It looks like Facebook now works even without the VPN. I will have my team of researchers double check by playing FarmVille intensively for several days straight. Actually, it is hard to STOP my team from playing FarmVille.
I still use the VPN service because it is useful to use with Hulu and the CW websites.
I am looking for a Japanese friends face book page who lives in Japan. I have seen the page on other Japanese visitors computers but I cannot access the page from USA. Any suggestions. Facebook.jp???