Japanese cell phone culture

Sponsorship the way you would do it

In Japan, cellular phones have become ubiquitous and many of the population are equipped with such a mobile telephone. However, due to technology differences, such as video and camera capabilities lead to a cell phone culture developing.

First, Japanese cellphones are physically very small and folding cellphones are 'cool' as this satisfies both the need to be small and the need for a large screen. Many citizens usually keep one in their pockets, and sometimes people have a "keitai" or a cell phone as small, light and thick as a credit card. Many phones can take a picture and video with their small lenses.

Japanese cellular telephones (as well as many in the Western world) can be connected to Internet through service such as i-mode. Japan was also the first to launch 3G services on a large scale. Teens shoot off a very large number of E-mails daily and these are often attached with a picture.

However, there is a negative aspect. Radio waves can cause interference with heart pacemakers and other medical devices. Public etiquette is often violated, and due to the internet connectivity, spam has become a problem. After series of studies, it is now recommended that talking using a mobile phone is avoided in a train and a silent mode is recommended while on one. Around seats reserved for eldery and handicapped, it should be turned off. When train is crowded, it should be turned off. In a hospital, one should turn off entirely.

Teenage Culture

Mobile phones have become an inseparable part of everyday teenage life. It is so rapidly evolving that everything written here should be considered already old informations.

It is believed that the paging device used in late 1980s to early 1990s that predates mobile phone and could only display numbers seeded the cell phone culture. Though this ability was supposed to tell the number to call, it was quickly used to convey a short message. A complex sets of numbers were devloped that communicated everything from greetings to everyday emotions. Most were based on various ways numbers could be read in Japanese. Some of few that could still be recognized are; 4649, Yo-ro-si-ku, lit. nice to meet you or hello. 3341, Sa-mi-si-i lit. I feel lonely. Unlike similar paging 'messages' sent in other culture, many messages spoke about things like inner emotions and tend to talk about non-business matters.

With a rapidly falling price of mobile phones in mid 1990s, these people 'graduated' from paging devices and begun experimenting with the 'short message' service that the mobile phone company offered. When i-mode service begun, the mobile phone culture begun flourishing in the earnest. Magazines and TV regulary makes specials focusing on the 'current trend' of how mobile phones are used by young people.

Japanese mobile phones have the capability to use very large sets of characters and icons based on JIS standards that defines characters for communicating across devices. More than thousand characters including all alphabets, hiragana, katakana, Kanji and special characters like cm (centimeter), arrows, musical notes, etc. can be used to make a message.

These are used extensivly and often in a way that do not use their original meaning and adapting a entirely new one. One of the vey distinct form of writing is called 'kogal moji', lit. girls' character. For example Lt does not mean alphabets 'Lt' but is a hiragana, け 'ke'. Notice that it looks very similar when written. Every hiragana, katakana and kanji are taken apart and reassembled using different characters.