Bought a cd/DVD in Japan, but says i cant watch it in the USA?

Question:

Ok a few weeks ago i took a vacation to Japan and bought a CD with a bonus DVD. I just got back to the states, the CD works but the DVD doesn't. It says "Regional Error" in my DVD player. And Says that the DVD can't play in this region (USA) on my laptop.
Is there any way around this .....or do i have to go all the way to japan to watch this bonus DVD

Answer:

It's a region lock which is easily defeated. I am surprised more ex-pats don't even know this.

You don't have to buy another region free DVD player. If you have a PC DVD writer, you can copy the DVD and strip out that and any other junk the makers throw into it. There are 2 simple ways - the easiest is searching for a program like DVDFab HD Decrypter or DVDFab Free DVD at http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm or you can get a program like AnyDVD, then rip your DVD to your hard drive and then burn it as a new DVD minus the junk. The paid versions you can use for so many days as a trial, which should suit your purposes.
When you put the DVD in your computer, you may have to accept the DVD writer changing its region code to read the disk. After that when you put in a US DVD you can change it back. Most writers allow up to 5 changes before it locks itself into a region permanently.