bought something

I bought the March 2007 (35th) issue of マジキュー at 紀伊國屋書店 (the one at Orchard Road; a major shopping district) for about S$23.80 (including 5% tax).
You may notice that the price on the front says 980円 (not sure if it includes tax), which is roughly equal to S$12, but considering the fact that I never been to 日本 before. At that time I was considering if I should buy volumes 3 & 4 of 魔法先生ネギま！ (they are about S$10 each although the back of the book says ￥390E. (What does the "E" mean? "Excluding tax"?). (edit: I found a square at the bottom left of the back which looks somethig like 本体９３３円)

Since most of the マジキュー (majikuu/magic) magazine pages (130 in total; each page is about the size of an A4 paper or more than 2 times in terms of area as compared to that of a manga page) is in full colour and but manga is small enough to fit in your pocket. In the end I decided to go with the マジキュー magazine. Inside was illustrations from anime related games / tv show etc. etc. (most of them are of girls btw) This is better than looking at images from the internet. Of course, I will buy more if I earn at least 10x more than the usual S$100 a month (none if there is school vacation) and able to go to Japan since it is obviously cheaper than buying here (though the price here includes transportation etc. which kinda offsets the cost of buying a flight to there and back plus accomadation, etc. ).

I found great difficulty removing the plastic wrapping off it since it is enforced with strong (transparent) tape at both horizontally and vertically. I ended up using a scissors/pen knife to cut it.

By the way, is it cheaper if I take a budget airline (Tiger Airways, AirAsia etc.) from here (Singapore) to Hong Kong and then from there take a regular flight (ANA, Singapore Airlines etc.) to Narita as compared to taking a regular flight directly? (And when will this "Rock Airway" (search at google if you want to know what it is) start it's service? It's been almost a year since people first heard of it recurting people. It claims to be a budget carrier that flies to East Asian cities.)