Won't Miss #439 - electrical current issues

When my husband and I first came to Japan, my mother insisted on giving us a gift to take with us. It was a talking digital clock. These days, electronic devices seem to be incapable of shutting up, but 23 years ago, that was an unusual gadget. We took it with us and plugged it in. It seemed to still work, but it kept losing vast amounts of time. It seemed that the power differences between