I went down to Shibuya today because it was something to do. I got a mobile phone too. And it only took me a few months. Not that I have many people to contact.
Getting the phone was a true experience too. Basically, I knew what phone I wanted to get and just wanted to find somewhere cheap. Cheap being free in this case. The phone system here is pretty different from other parts of the world (theory one - the Japanese are "racist" and keep the best stuff for themselves) both technologically and stylistically[A]. As far as I can tell, the fashions in phones have already been explored here quite extensively. The phone I got was with J-PHONE (guess what J means…) which is in the process of being rebranded as "Vodafone". There are so many pictures of David Beckham floating about to advertise them too. They also use Michael Schumacher and Hidetoshi Nakata but there is so much more Beckage that it is quite scary. Anyway, here, each handset is exclusive to the network so if you want a specific handset, you need to go on a specific network. I was not too bothered. They have some pretty nifty phones here too and they all have cameras and lots have video too. Mine can take pictures at a decent resolution (640 x 480) and store three mins of video. There is a really great one on DoCoMo, which rotates and has a 1MP camera. I never saw the point in cameras on phones before but it is useful to be able to take quick pics of info. I never send them though[B].
Anyway, the shop I got it from was a "Yahoo BB!" shop in deepest Shibuya - not where I would expect to find it cheap but it was free and you cannot get much cheaper than that. And the process was well worth it. Now my Japanese is still pretty much non-existent but I can point and say, "How much is that?" [ikura desu ka] and then followed by "I'll have that" [kudasai]. So I did that, I wanted it in red and that was sorted out so I went to the counter. I got pretty deep into the contract I was signing and understood most of it vvia some hand gestures and face making. I even wrote some Hiragana and Katakana for my name and address. Which I am quite proud of! The attendant knew no English at all (fair enough) so there was a lot of pointing and giggling from both parties until she had the best idea ever. Being a "Yahoo BB!" shop they had a fair few PCs online (they use these shops to sell broadband and also to show how life changingly amazing it all is) so she had the bright idea of using online English <--> Japanese translation.
Pure Comedy.
I have used these translators quite often (to read Japanese sites) such as http://babelfish.altavista.com/ and they are not supremely accurate. Better than nothing and OK for gist I guess but the languages are quite quite different. She just finished the main thing and then typed loads in for the detailed questions at the end - asking me about call waiting and voicemail. I think. It took a long time to type it all in but I didn't mind too much - its difficult to mind when she seems so very nice, helpful and always breezy.
Then, she asked me something that I had no idea about. So she mimed it, which made Paul and myself crack up (and then her too afterwards). I had no clue so she just did it again. Basically, she put her right arm like a chicken wing and then flapped it in time to four notes she sang- "puh puh puh paaaa". It was hilarious and I just wanted to see it again. And again. It was even better because she knew I had no clue what she meant yet she continued to do it and smile whilst doing it. She loved it! Paul said it even surpassed Junko's b-boy impression - his previous highlight. After a few attempts at explaining, she sauntered over to the PC and did her translation magic[C].
Getting the phone was a true experience too. Basically, I knew what phone I wanted to get and just wanted to find somewhere cheap. Cheap being free in this case. The phone system here is pretty different from other parts of the world (theory one - the Japanese are "racist" and keep the best stuff for themselves) both technologically and stylistically[A]. As far as I can tell, the fashions in phones have already been explored here quite extensively. The phone I got was with J-PHONE (guess what J means…) which is in the process of being rebranded as "Vodafone". There are so many pictures of David Beckham floating about to advertise them too. They also use Michael Schumacher and Hidetoshi Nakata but there is so much more Beckage that it is quite scary. Anyway, here, each handset is exclusive to the network so if you want a specific handset, you need to go on a specific network. I was not too bothered. They have some pretty nifty phones here too and they all have cameras and lots have video too. Mine can take pictures at a decent resolution (640 x 480) and store three mins of video. There is a really great one on DoCoMo, which rotates and has a 1MP camera. I never saw the point in cameras on phones before but it is useful to be able to take quick pics of info. I never send them though[B].
Anyway, the shop I got it from was a "Yahoo BB!" shop in deepest Shibuya - not where I would expect to find it cheap but it was free and you cannot get much cheaper than that. And the process was well worth it. Now my Japanese is still pretty much non-existent but I can point and say, "How much is that?" [ikura desu ka] and then followed by "I'll have that" [kudasai]. So I did that, I wanted it in red and that was sorted out so I went to the counter. I got pretty deep into the contract I was signing and understood most of it vvia some hand gestures and face making. I even wrote some Hiragana and Katakana for my name and address. Which I am quite proud of! The attendant knew no English at all (fair enough) so there was a lot of pointing and giggling from both parties until she had the best idea ever. Being a "Yahoo BB!" shop they had a fair few PCs online (they use these shops to sell broadband and also to show how life changingly amazing it all is) so she had the bright idea of using online English <--> Japanese translation.
Pure Comedy.
I have used these translators quite often (to read Japanese sites) such as http://babelfish.altavista.com/ and they are not supremely accurate. Better than nothing and OK for gist I guess but the languages are quite quite different. She just finished the main thing and then typed loads in for the detailed questions at the end - asking me about call waiting and voicemail. I think. It took a long time to type it all in but I didn't mind too much - its difficult to mind when she seems so very nice, helpful and always breezy.
Then, she asked me something that I had no idea about. So she mimed it, which made Paul and myself crack up (and then her too afterwards). I had no clue so she just did it again. Basically, she put her right arm like a chicken wing and then flapped it in time to four notes she sang- "puh puh puh paaaa". It was hilarious and I just wanted to see it again. And again. It was even better because she knew I had no clue what she meant yet she continued to do it and smile whilst doing it. She loved it! Paul said it even surpassed Junko's b-boy impression - his previous highlight. After a few attempts at explaining, she sauntered over to the PC and did her translation magic[C].
Is marriage confirmed?
She was simply asking if I was married. I personally would have done some mime based on the wedding ring and I still, to this day have no idea what her mime was[D]. The tune was not a wedding song and I have never been to a chicken wedding either.
With that bit of fun over, I had to wait a while for them to activate the phone (and charge it up a bit for me and then I was away. And all connected up……….but to nobody.
---All lettered footnotes were written in 2015---
A. For quite a long time, the Japanese mobile phone economy was quite different to the European one but there is a deal of convergence now with the smartphone. The "flip-phone" was hugely popular in Japan and internet usage was very common already at this point with almost all phones using e-mail instead of text messaging such that there were few problems communicating with other people either on phone or computer. Smartphones were not as quick to penetrate for this reason as many of the benefits of smartphones were not new to Japanese users and a major factor, in my opinion, is the typing of Japanese being quite well suited to a numerical keypad so the big benefit of a keyboard was lost. Flip phones were convenient though with portability and decent sizes available.↩
B. This is still true and I rarely use the camera which is, of course, ubiquitous on mobile phones now. I used to take pictures of maps and timetables when I went somewhere so that I could have that as a reference when I needed it. It may not be much fun (although many had fun at my expense for doing such things) but it was very useful and many people did also do it after initially mocking me. Of course, this was a time when online mapping was not so common but the timetables (and journey planners etc) were already commonplace on the walled internets that the phone companies provided. Mapping is seen as such a commonplace thing but it was at around about this time that Google released their "Earth" and "Maps" products and I do remember being amazed by them at the time. When I first provided instructions to how to come to my flat for some visitors, I drew the map out and labelled the relevant buildings by hand. I then took a photo of the map to put online and also walked the route from the station to my flat and took pictures of the junction so that the visitors would be able to find it. I put all of that stuff onto an unlinked page on my website to send to people when they came. Now, I guess I'd just provide the address.↩
C. Again, this was not a particularly well developed field at the time and machine translation was not really able to convert across the grammatical differences well. The questions would probably be trivially simple for a modern translation engine such as Google Translate which is also machine translation but is constantly adapting and learning in order to give decent output. 2003 was a strange time, technologically speaking, and it was the cusp of the truly pervasive internet. I can see that now.↩
D. Thinking back to this, I have a feeling they were meant to be bagpipes - it is the only common instrument that seems to have the heft. This particular story is one that I completely forgot (as, in fact, had Paul) about until I read it recently but, in hindsight, this was one of my happiest moments in my Japanese time. Everything felt so fresh, exciting and comfortable at the same time - and having a longer standing friend there at the time also made it feel more real.↩
---All lettered footnotes were written in 2015---
A. For quite a long time, the Japanese mobile phone economy was quite different to the European one but there is a deal of convergence now with the smartphone. The "flip-phone" was hugely popular in Japan and internet usage was very common already at this point with almost all phones using e-mail instead of text messaging such that there were few problems communicating with other people either on phone or computer. Smartphones were not as quick to penetrate for this reason as many of the benefits of smartphones were not new to Japanese users and a major factor, in my opinion, is the typing of Japanese being quite well suited to a numerical keypad so the big benefit of a keyboard was lost. Flip phones were convenient though with portability and decent sizes available.↩
B. This is still true and I rarely use the camera which is, of course, ubiquitous on mobile phones now. I used to take pictures of maps and timetables when I went somewhere so that I could have that as a reference when I needed it. It may not be much fun (although many had fun at my expense for doing such things) but it was very useful and many people did also do it after initially mocking me. Of course, this was a time when online mapping was not so common but the timetables (and journey planners etc) were already commonplace on the walled internets that the phone companies provided. Mapping is seen as such a commonplace thing but it was at around about this time that Google released their "Earth" and "Maps" products and I do remember being amazed by them at the time. When I first provided instructions to how to come to my flat for some visitors, I drew the map out and labelled the relevant buildings by hand. I then took a photo of the map to put online and also walked the route from the station to my flat and took pictures of the junction so that the visitors would be able to find it. I put all of that stuff onto an unlinked page on my website to send to people when they came. Now, I guess I'd just provide the address.↩
C. Again, this was not a particularly well developed field at the time and machine translation was not really able to convert across the grammatical differences well. The questions would probably be trivially simple for a modern translation engine such as Google Translate which is also machine translation but is constantly adapting and learning in order to give decent output. 2003 was a strange time, technologically speaking, and it was the cusp of the truly pervasive internet. I can see that now.↩
D. Thinking back to this, I have a feeling they were meant to be bagpipes - it is the only common instrument that seems to have the heft. This particular story is one that I completely forgot (as, in fact, had Paul) about until I read it recently but, in hindsight, this was one of my happiest moments in my Japanese time. Everything felt so fresh, exciting and comfortable at the same time - and having a longer standing friend there at the time also made it feel more real.↩
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