Ketai

I just got my Japanese cell phone last Friday, or ketai (which translates to carry-on or carry-able). This thing makes the American cellular system look like oblong stone wheels.

It has a 2MPix camera, with basic video/pic editing (I still haven't figured out how to do this). You can store pictures and any other data format on a 16mb memory SD memory chip. My phone doesn't come with MP3 capability, but it has a Japanese-English dictionary, which I thought was less cool but more useful. Obviously, the whole thing is not just in color, but is in fact a fully functional SVGA equivalent quality viewer--the quality is good enough to watch and record live TV (which you can do for $.30 a minute). Naturally it has internet access. I can download games, new ring-tones, news, and even porn and adult dating service. Imagine the possibilities! There's also a to-do list, memo, schedule, and address book with pictures of the people. Although the calling service is pretty expensive, about $40 a month for only 66 anytime minutes (minutes over the limit cost an astounding $.30 per minute!), it only costs about $.03 to send and receive email from and to other cell phones or regular computer email addresses. It's more expensive to send and receive emails longer than 128 characters or pictures (about $.50 I think). There is a discount to call/email other users of the Vodafone plan, which I haven't fully taken advantage of. So far, JETs in Tottori who have gone cellular are split between Vodafone an DoCoMo (which has 5 times more free minutes but cost 10 times more for emails). We'll see how this cellular battle pans out in the near future.