Hello everyone! Welcome to Liv N' Luv Japan! Today, I will talk about keitai! You may not have heard of it but you have probably seen it many times in anime, manga, j-drama, etc. They are the smartphones in Japan that looks like flip phones! And today, they are still very popular in Japan and works as well as any new mobile smartphone.
The number of mobile phone contracts are more than 127 million, more than 80% of Japan's population (pop.: 128 million) owning one or more mobile phones! Might as well say the everyone in Japan have a cell phone! ^_^
Starting in 1999 in Japan, Japanese manufacturers integrated email and internet capabilities for mobile phones. This makes Japan the first country in the world to introduced internet service to mobile phones! So, when I think of it, because of Japan, we are able to have the idea of having internet on our phones! Thank you Japan!! For you guys who don't know, keitai literally means "mobile" in Japanese, and the Japanese use keitai phones to communicate by email than actual phone conversations like calling. In Japan, striking up a friendship with people you meet and start getting along with, you'll eventually start exchanging emails because it's the most popular way to communicate now in Japan.
In Japan, it's the norm to see people standing in street corners or on a train or subway seeing people stare at their phones for a long period of time, and most of the time it's mostly because they spend lots of their time communicating by email. Mobile phones and having an email to exchange with people is an essential part of having and creating friendships in Japan.
For junior high schools students, approximately 50% of them and more than 90% of high school students have a mobile phone! Because of the popularity of mobile phones in Japan, the Japanese has fostered the country's unique and exotic culture of pictographs. We know them as either emoticons and/or emojis. It's used mostly by women and people use them to express their emotions in a fun way!
In my opinion, I love emojis! Usually if people would message me or either text me or even if I am posting most of the time on my social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. you will never see a something I wrote without some emojis! Emojis are my obsession and I honestly I enjoy talking to people who also use emojis often because it makes their messages fun to read and make it interesting. ^_^
Also because of the major popularity of the Japanese keitai mobile phones, their is a new literary genre in Japan called the "mobile phone novels". Which is was weird when I first heard about this a year or two ago because I was like, "A movie or a book based on phones?". But, then when I actually thought about it, I sounded it might be good to see what they will do about to see if it is actually a good genre because this is the only genre I heard of that didn't make sense to me at first until I watched a Japanese movie called "Koizora" (translation: Love Sky). The movie had over 12 million hits! It generated an unbelievable popularity, mostly upon young women. Unlike a conventional e-book, the novel started out as digital format and later a published book. The novel sold over 2 million and became a best seller. (Also for you guys who don't know, I have actually seen the movie and I have done a review on Koizora which is on my blog so if you're interested, check it out!)
Well, that's all the information I can put into thought about the keitai mobile phones. I hope you guys enjoyed the article! Now, my opinion about the keitai.....I WANT ONE! What really makes me want one are actually the little decorations you can add to your keitai and I find them to look so kawaii and it just influences me to get one! Let me know your opinions about the keitai by commenting! Thank you guys so much! Arigatou gozaimasu!
