 Japanese
mobile phone culture, 携帯電話, けいたいでんわ, keitai denwa -
In Japan, mobile phones have become ubiquitous. In Japanese,
mobile phones are called keitai denwa, literally "portable
telephones," and are often known simply as keitai.
Much of the Japanese population own cellular
phones(especially flip phones), most of which are equipped
with enhancements such as video and camera capabilities.
This pervasiveness and the particularities of their usage
lead to the development of a mobile phone culture, or "keitai
culture."
Talking on a mobile phone while riding a bus or train is
frowned upon, and messages asking passengers not to make
calls and to switch their phones to silent mode ("public
mode" or "manners mode" in Japanese) are played frequently.
This, combined with the low per-message price, ample allowed
length per message (10,000 characters per message) the
ability to enhance messages with special characters,
emoticons, pictures, and small animations, and to write in
English or Japanese, has made e-mailing from cell phones
extremely popular among people of all ages.
Many people send and receive a large number of e-mails
daily; teenagers are especially fond of this simple, fast,
and private method of communication, and many schools ban
the use of cellular phones on campus.
E-mails are also a popular way to communicate with potential
friends or lovers. Many internet sites maintain
phone-accessible portals via which users can search for and
contact others with similar interests.
Japanese mobile phones have the capability to use very large
sets of characters and icons based on JIS standards that
define characters for industrial appliances. More than one
thousand characters including all of the Latin alphabet,
hiragana, katakana, kanji and special characters like cm
(centimeter), arrows, musical notes and more can be used to
compose messages. Japanese mobile phones also use emoticons
differently from Western mobile phones.
These character sets are used extensively, and often in a
way that do not use their original meaning by relying more
on the information based on the shape each character has.
For example, '\' may be attached at the end of a sentence to
show that they are not happy about the event described. A
sentence like "I have a test today\" (translated) might mean
that he or she didn't study enough, or that the test itself
is depressing. Some of these usages disappeared as suitable
icons were made but these newly made icons also acquired a
usage not originally intended. Another example deals with
the astrological symbol for Libra (♎). It resembles a cooked
and puffed mochi, and is sometimes used in a happy new
year's message as mochi are often eaten then. The symbol for
Aquarius (♒) resembles waves, so this would be used to mean
'sea'. The number of icons gradually increased and they are
now colored on most cell phones, to make them more distinct.
ASCII art is also used widely and many of them are faces
with expression.
Information source: “Japanese mobile phone culture.”
wikipedia.org. Article date: 25 Jan. 2008. Retrieved:
Wikipedia. 4 Feb. 2008 <Japanese
mobile phone culture>.
Video - The following are all commercials
about the Japanese keitai. The first video is about a girl
with a hearing problem, pretty nice advertisement. The next
videos all feature American celebrities. |
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