Shoppers in Tokyo browse a selection of mobile phones. (PANA)

Mobile phones have transformed how the Japanese spend time on the train. In the past, an overwhelming number of passengers could be seen reading books, newspapers, and other printed material. For many visitors from overseas, this scene was symbolic of the diligent Japanese. Now, however, cell phones have become another major provider of entertainment on the train. These phones, while being so compact as to fit comfortably inside one's pocket, are extremely versatile multimedia tools that allow users to do everything from sending e-mail to playing online games, and even listening to music.

Three examples are offered to illustrate how people of various ages are integrating cell phones into their lives, each in his or her own way.

Yuka Ito, age 17 It's seven a.m. A movie theme song starts playing on the cell phone of Yuka Ito (17). Switching off the music, which she downloaded from the Internet to use as a wake-up alarm, Yuka checks her e-mail: three messages received after she went to bed. Heading for school, she calls a friend on her way to the train station in lieu of writing a reply. As for the other two messages, she writes back on the train. Yuka even exchanges e-mails with her friends between classes. They decide to go shopping after school, and Yuka surfs the Net to check out information on the sales taking place around town. At the store, she just can't make up her mind between three skirts, so she has a friend take photos of her in the fitting room using the tiny camera on her phone and e-mails them to another friend. The friend, who has an excellent eye for fashion, sends back her comments in next to no time. Yuka finishes off her day with a long bath. Of course, she passes the time by chatting with her friends via e-mail. After the bath, she makes an entry on an online diary site through her phone, then finally goes to sleep.

Koji Takahashi, age 29 Koji Takahashi (29), a home builder employee, recently switched from a PDA to his cell phone to keep track of his schedule. The phone reminds him of important appointments and meetings by sounding an alarm 10, 15, or however many minutes he desires in advance. His cell phone has also replaced his portable music player; he now records music from minidiscs onto a memory card attached to his phone. Moreover, Koji no longer needs to take specialists with him whenever he visits a client who has made an inquiry about home improvement. He can take photos and even videos with his cell phone, send them to the head office, and wait for instructions. He can also consult with various sections of the company wherever he might be, so giving an estimate for the project takes less time than it used to. Koji communicates with his girlfriend every day, even during work hours. But he doesn't worry about what his boss might think because he can exchange quick, short e-mails with his girlfriend on his cell phone quite inconspicuously. The two of them can decide when and where to meet up without ever talking to each other on the phone.

Susumu Sasaki, age 75 Susumu Sasaki (75) bought a cell phone half a year ago. Not that he wanders around all that much, but he has a chronic heart problem, so having immediate access to a phone provides reassurance to both himself and his family. Using a location information service, Susumu can call up a map of his current position anytime--the only difficulty being that he always has to squint to see the map on the small display. If his family has any reason to worry about his whereabouts, moreover, they can request information from an operator, who will check his location and report back in just a few minutes. Some people of his generation feel that things like computers and cell phones are beyond their comprehension, but Susumu is not one of them. He even uses e-mail to keep in touch with some of his friends. His recent favorite is cell-phone karaoke: He has his granddaughter download his favorite songs to his phone, and the lyrics would show up on the display as he sings along to the accompaniment. On evenings at the bar with friends, his cell phone sometimes doubles as a mini karaoke jukebox.

Thumb Typing at Lightning Speed
The spread of mobile phones has spawned a number of related events, including a contest of cell-phone typing speed. One such competition in Tokyo attracted nearly 300 contestants, who vied to be the first to finish typing a tongue twister 12 characters long and submitting the results to a designated e-mail address. The winner's e-mail was received in just 8 seconds. Taking transmission time into account, this is equivalent to typing 100 characters per minute - roughly the speed required to pass the top-level Japanese-language word processing exam on a regular keyboard using 10 fingers, rather than just 2 thumbs. According to one estimate, there are at least 1.5 million people in Japan who can type on their cell phones at speeds like this.

The manual dexterity of the Japanese, made famous in the past by their mastery of the abacus, is once again being brought into full play with the spread of cell-phone e-mail.

Part and Parcel of Young People's Lives
There are nearly 80 million mobile phones in use in Japan, more, in fact, than the number of wired phones. Japan's population is roughly 127 million, meaning that three out of five people own a mobile phone. Of these phones, close to 75% have access to the Internet. In Japan, personal computers cannot be called the standard medium for surfing the Net; the cell phone is steadily becoming the most familiar information equipment.

What is the top possession that young Japanese women cannot stand forgetting at home? According to a recent survey, it is neither their wallets nor their handkerchiefs, but their cell phones. When these women forget their phones at home, they are restless and feel insecure all day. For today's young people, the cell phone is an alter ego with which they can connect with friends and society 24 hours a day. And it is precisely because the phone is virtually a part of themselves that they spend so much time and money customizing it, by downloading their favorite songs for ring tones, by attaching straps, stickers, and other ornaments, and in other novel ways.

Total Communication and Entertainment Tool
No machine has ever won over so many users or been so universally embraced by all age groups as the mobile phone. One reason for its acceptance has been the rapid pace of technological development. The latest phones being marketed by Japan's mobile phone carriers have a video camera function. J-Phone was the first to offer this service, which enables users to capture up to five seconds of moving images with a built-in camera, and by November 2002 sales of movie-capable phones had topped the 1 million mark. Phones with built-in cameras (including those for still images) accounted for about 30% of the approximately 20 million units sold between April and September 2002, according to the Multimedia Research Institute. The share is expected to rise to over 70% in the half year starting in October 2002.

Other state-of-the-art functions include a display that will turn into a mirror; an infrared-transmission feature, eliminating the need to send images over the phone network; and the world's first liquid-crystal display capable of showing 3D images. Cell-phone services are expected to expand even further, making these devices less of a phone and more of a total multimedia communication and entertainment tool.