I’ve just moved to Tokyo last week, and finally got around to building a new PC. However, I’ve experienced a lot of confusion when trying to actually plug the tower and monitor into the wall, and both have green grounding cables connected to the normal 2-pin adapter. This would normally make sense, but in my apartment the only outlet with a ground/earth thing to hook the green ground wire onto is next to the fridge, making it impossible to connect all the way in another room to my PC. Does anyone know if there is a way around using the ground cords? Would a surge protector suffice?
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Japan’s power outlets are dumb. You can either get a raw cable to connect the ground directly into the wall, or you can ignore the grounding at your own peril.
Just don’t attach it. I use an extension cable with ‘lighting protection’. Honestly I don’t know 100% if it’ll be enough, but what other option do I have? I basically just hope that the taller buildings around my house will get struck and I won’t get a huge surge, but ‘lighting always strikes the highest place’ isn’t actually true.
Had the same problem in my 2020 build マンション. Had to ignore it, but it’s stupid and drives me mad.
You will have surge protection and ground fault protection btw. your PC components will just not be grounded. Which sucks.
just buy a outlet strip with surge protection
One solution is to get a 2pin+ground wire to 3pin adapter then plug into a surge protector and use a 3pin to 2pin+ground adapter. It’s a bit jank but at least you can get everything grounded.
That doesn’t solve the wall outlet problem though. Check that there aren’t any two pin outlets with a flap covering the ground screw though (albeit that’s unlikely, they normally have 3 pin + ground screw). Last resort is dragging a ground wire to that outlet.
But yea like others have posted, most people just don’t ground.