Things Japanese - "Cellphones"

Although not uniquely a Japanese phenomenon, the cellphone craze that began just a few years ago has become a part of Japanese popular culture. There is nowhere to escape from the myriad of different ring tones and tunes, whether you are shopping, in a restaurant, at work or on a train. The country's obsession with all things electrical has made Japan a word leader in cellphones, with the latest technological advances in the field invariably coming from these shores.

What can you do with your cell phone?

If you think you can only use your phone to answer calls then you're sorely mistaken. Nowadays, a cell phone is not just a mere device that enables you use to answer phone calls anymore. Many phones no come with infrared links and satllite positioning systems as standard. You can also surf the internet, send emails, download and play video games, buy soda from vending machines, call up your favorite tunes from a karaoke machine, take digital photos and short movies and even cook breakfast. (Okay, so the cooking breakfast part was a slight exaggeration).

Getting online via computer is relatively expensive in Japan; about 90 percent of the nation's Internet users are able to connect from their cell phones. Likewise, the intensifying competition among the nation's three mobile carriers (NTT DoCoMo, J-phone, and AU) adds to the array of gimmicky cell phone services that is popping up.

A soon-to-come service from Japan's top mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo, working with Coca-Cola, lets people use their cell phones as a type of identification, using an infrared signal, so people can buy canned soda from vending machines. Payments are made in advance in cash into the vending machines after flashing the infrared signal from the wireless phone, allowing each phone to work as a cash card. A version of that service, which is already available, requires downloading a bar code to the cell phone's display and using that to buy soda cash-free. There are currently only about 260 such vending machines nationwide but DoCoMo plans to increase that to about 2,000 by the end of 2003.

For many Japanese, mobile phones are a type of pop entertainment, symbolic of a carefree youth culture, rather than a practical business tool. One new mobile service allows people to punch codes into cell phones and send them as an infrared signal to karaoke machines for hassle-free, immediate crooning. Or, by using a phone that has just been released from Toshiba Corp. for KDDI Corp.'s mobile service, people can download video clips or send along video recorded with a pea-size digital camera lodged in the cell phone. All the newer models of cell phone now come with a built-in digital cameras and some with distance network cameras.

The original cellphones with built-in cameras that came out a few years were crude devices that took poor quality pictures. As the technology has developed and prices have fallen we are now seeing built-in digital cameras that can take pictures of quality up to 1 million pixels (1 Megapixel). This is as good as many of the digital cameras that you find in your local elecrical store. Phones are also starting to come with memory cards, so you can store all the photos or movies that you take.

Some of the new cellphone technology embeds Java, a programming language that can run across the Internet, into cell phone software. Java enables subscribers to get real-time updates, interactive features and streaming video. Mobile phone makers, software developers and Japanese news executives say the innovation has the potential to reinvent the mobile Internet. Today, you can install a Java application that will execute a game, display animation, do online banking, trade stocks, send voice mail, stream audio or video content, or process information such as a two-dimensional bar code scanned from a retail catalog by the phone's integrated camera.

Recent television commercials and news have shown that some of the newest cellphones can even be used as a remote control for your television or as a key (using codes) to open coin locker, etc. A day where you will be able to drive your car and cook dinner with your cellphone cannot be far away........

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