Japanese Phones

Japan is a cell-phone society. Every person has a cellphone, even little children. It's somewhat interesting seeing as Japanese phone companies are more evil than Adolf Hitler riding a motorcycle full of dynamite, pockets full of puppies, into a hospital full of comatose nun orphans with a tacky vanity license plate reading "See U l8r."

First let's talk about why cellphones are so popular. Few Japanese homes have actual landlines. Japan has some of the cheapest broadband service in the world but nobody has it because to hook up a line costs a small fortune seeing as they pretty much have to run the copper wire to your home. You can see how much of a mess the system is by looking at Japanese powerlines, which cluster like the silk sewn from some giant cybernetic Tarantula and supported by these giant cancer enducing pylons. Because of this it's easier to go wireless.

Most Japanese go for contract phones because they are cheaper in the long run but you will be spending a minimum of $300 up front for the phone and almost no contracts are less than 2 years. The phone will do everything from letting you watch short range broadcast TV, scan barcodes, video chat, surf the web and any sort of IR, bluetooth or other wireless protocol; pretty much anything you can think of except make a phone call. Japanese do nothing but text. It's not the same as in America where all the trendy douche bags have to be trendy douchebags by texting their friends in class just to show off their new iPhone (which makes your e-penis at least 10 times longer). The reason is texting is cheap and unlimited and a regular phone call would bankrupt Scrooge McDuck.

For instance, I have a prepaid phone. A phone call costs me 9yen (9 cents) every 6 seconds. You do the math and you find out a local phone call to someone on the same network costs nearly a dollar per minute (I know which company executives are having a Karaoke party tonight). This of course means that texting is my only real option. In addition they never really added English predictive text so with the amount of time it would take to type out a message to my friend in Shinjuku it would probably be faster to jump on a train and tell them in person.

Note that while texting is unlimited it's only to people on the same network. Using Softbank if my friend had Docomo it would cost about 10yen (10 cents) a message. Well I guess I can only expect so much from the same assholes that charged me an extra $8 for the charger. That's like selling a car without tires.