[MachineHead]

Yeah i guess it's kinda freaky......company's are sometimes going to far .MMnnnn i guess it's is gonna be hard to meet people in clubs.....imagine talking to this hot girl all night long....and at the end of the night she tells you she only wanted to sell you her new Sony Ericsson's T68i cell phone .

[kamome]

Well, at least in Los Angeles, it will just mean more fake people hanging around looking to promote something, whether it be a phone or themselves.

[Mr. BIG]

Anybody know how much a j-phone with a digital camera runs for nowadays?? All of my Japanese friends who live in Japan have them, and I'm just wondering if the camera's some sort of standard feature on phones there or something.

[Crispy]

I don't see how this is different from any other kind of salesman, like the kind that came up to me a few days ago as I was getting into my car. It took a while to figure out what exactly this rather attractive girl about my age was selling, but it was pretty damned obvious that it was something. Anyway, if they are doing it in bars and such, the owners can kick them out, no foul.

[kamome]

Anybody know how much a j-phone with a digital camera runs for nowadays?? All of my Japanese friends who live in Japan have them, and I'm just wondering if the camera's some sort of standard feature on phones there or something.

J-Phone cornered the market on camera phones, or "sha-mail" ("sha" is the first character in the word "shashin", which means "picture"). J-Phones aren't very expensive at all. DoCoMo recently came out with models that take pictures, but they're more expensive. Sha-mail isn't a standard feature on all phones; it's more of a gimmick to counter DoCoMo's dominance of the market through the i-mode service.

[Mr. BIG]

Cool. Do you have to pay extra for a 'sha-mail' phone, or do they give them away for free when you sign up? I won't go back to Japan for about a year or so and I'm just wonderin....

[Mr. BIG]

Ultra-- Thanks a lot for the link. I've heard that unless you wanna be a complete social-outcast, you must have a ketai in Japan. I figure that if I get a phone with a camera I can send my friends back home some nice pics of what they're missing.

[Crispy]

I'll probably get a keitai in Japan, as not to tie up the host family's ground line. I'll go for el cheapo though, since I will only be able to use it for a few months.

[Mr. BIG]

Hey Crispy, how long are you studying in Japan for and where?? I know you've mentioned it already in other threads, but I'm feelin lazy. I'll be a sophomore at Indiana University this fall, and I'm planning to study abroad (hopefully at Jochi Daigaku in Tokyo) for my entire junior year. Good Luck Man!!

[mercutio]

So are the phone/pda hybrids at all popular over there? the mongrel that look like a palmV with a flip phone?

I'm really hoping to find something like the Sony Clie with the swivel screen and built in camera, but that is also a phone.... anyone seen something like that

http://www.sonystyle.com/micros/clie/models/70V.html

[Crispy]

Hey Crispy, how long are you studying in Japan for and where?? I know you've mentioned it already in other threads, but I'm feelin lazy. I'll be a sophomore at Indiana University this fall, and I'm planning to study abroad (hopefully at Jochi Daigaku in Tokyo) for my entire junior year. Good Luck Man!!

Okay mister lazy, I am going there for one semester (August to December), and I will be at Tokyo Kokusai Daigaku in Kawagoe, Saitama.

[Mr. BIG]

I was almost positive you were going to TCU....What school do you go to here in the states?? I know a guy from Indiana University who's also going to TCU this fall--it sounds like a really fun place to be.

[Crispy]

I go to Willamette University in Salem, OR. It has a sister school relationship with TIU (Tokyo International University/Tokyo Kokusai Daigaku) in Kawagoe, that gives us special bonuses if we go there.

[Mr. BIG]

That's cool....it's great if you can go on a program through your school. I really wanna go to Tokyo for a year, but my school has no such program; I just started another thread asking for advice about that--

I'll probably get a keitai in Japan, as not to tie up the host family's ground line. I'll go for el cheapo though, since I will only be able to use it for a few months.

Yeah, I hear that....besides, even if you do get a bottom-of-the-line Japanese cheapo, it's still gonna be like 5years more advanced than anything you'd get in America (we're trying to catch up, as this thread suggests). I've heard that you've gotta get a gaijin-registration card or something before you can get your ketai, too; Harvey knows the specifics of exactly what you need to sign up--he just moved to Japan a couple months ago.

[Mr. BIG]

Wow!! 10yen!?! 1yen!?! I had no idea they were THAT cheap....I figured some places probably give them away sometimes for signing up or whatever, but that's amazing.

Do you sign up for a plan with a certain # of minutes/emails/etc every month for a year, or are all the plans monthly (I know you said you cancel your plans each month)??

[Mr. BIG]

Cool....Do you sign up for your plans online, too, or do you actually go into the shops and do everything??

[Crispy]

I had always told myself that I would hold out for as long as possible before getting a mobile, but it seems I can't hold out any longer. I hope it doesn't consume my life like I have seen it do to others...

[Mr. BIG]

The best thing about keitais is using email and IM, because you can do that in most places you aren't allowed to talk on the phone. And you can communicate internationally without long distance charges.

Those are the reasons people get so attached to their ketai.....in America, there aren't very many situations where an email or instant message can be better than a phone call....in Japan, however, you'll probably spend countless minutes milling around train stations (or in trains), or you'll need to meet somebody amidst a massive crowd; in these cases, the ketai is very helpful. Using a cell phone's nothing to be ashamed of, as long as you don't abuse it (i.e. Driving while talking on the phone, not paying attention to anything but the conversation, and slamming into someone/something).

[Crispy]

Yeah, so I have heard. It'll be nice also to be in a place where the old fashioned FM synthesis ringer on cellphones has been replaced with the wavetable and digital sample stuff.

Oh, I just saw a couple of Sony/Ericsson dressed folks distributing stuff about the camera fones as I was downtown picking up my now visa'd passport (finally! the last step!). They weren't the covert kind, but scarily I did recognise one of them as someone in my high school who graduated a year ahead of me.

[Crispy]

What about girls who keep them in their handbags, or do girls not keep their keitais in their handbags in Japan? Anyway, if I had to choose a ringtone, I'd choose a perfect representation of an old phone's bell.

[Crispy]

Uh, no. The idea is for it to be as inconspicuous as possible, but I'll probably still carry it in my backpack so it will need a ringer.

[Mr. BIG]

Oh, I just saw a couple of Sony/Ericsson dressed folks distributing stuff about the camera fones as I was downtown picking up my now visa'd passport (finally! the last step!). They weren't the covert kind...

I was just walking from a trainstation in downtown Chicago to the office I'm interning at and some chick on the corner (not a hottie and not at all covert) tells me I "Have to check out the Sony-Erickson T68i" and tries to shove a pamphlet about the phone in my face....I ignored her and thought immediately of FG....I wish I'd been carrying the old (but still better than most American phones) ketai my buddy gave me--I woulda shoved that in her face and told her it's old news.....