Notes from Japan: Keitai Denwa

By BUNJI BABY

01 January 2006

The Japanese for mobile phone is ‘keitai denwa’ – ‘keitai’ for short. Those funny Japs have come up with some pretty cool/weird stuff to do with their phones.

• image enhancers – you can add borders and little pictures to the photos you take with your keitai.

• It is now possible to pay for stuff using your keitai handset, at convenience stores and vending machines.

• all keitai have to make a sound when they are used to take photos. This is because pervy old men used to take photos up girls skirts – the sound’s to alert the girl that this is happening.

• Japan was the first country to launch 3G services on a large scale.

• One very distinct form of writing is called 'gyaru-moji' ('girls' characters'). For example Lt wouldn't correspond to the Latin characters 'L' and 't' but instead it would correspond to the hiragana け ('ke'). Nobody knows why they do this, because it takes twice as long.

• Somewhat quicker is the method of using japanese numbers to represent syllables and thus actual words:

• 4-6-4-9 -- yo-ro-shi-ku ("hello," "best regards")

• 3-3-4-1 -- sa-mi-shi-i ("I feel lonely")

• 8-8-9-1-9 -- ha-ya-ku-i-ku ("hurry up, let's go")

Japanese ‘verticons’