Cell Phone Creepers

Right now, my grandparents are watching a Japanese drama called “Gegege no Nyobo,” which is based on the memoirs of a famous manga artist’s wife. The program got me thinking back to when I used to watch the artist’s manga-turned-anime, “Gegege no Kitaro.” It was a dark series dealing with the ghosts and ghouls of the supernatural world. The main character is a kid with a missing eye. His buddy is a talking eyeball who likes sitting in water bowls. Yeah, go figure.
As creepy as the show looked, it left such a strong impression on my childhood that when I saw these stickers at Tokyu Hands I stood there staring longingly for several minutes before finally peeling myself away:

These aren’t just ordinary stickers. You use them to decorate your phone, creating ghoulish scenes up and down your keypad. And the stickers are durable, so you don’t have to worry about scuffing.
Cell phone decorating (otherwise known as “deko-den”) can be a work of art, though most of what I’ve seen is just pink and cutesy. I don’t know about you, but my taste palate has become oversaturated with Hello Kitty sweetness. Time for the dark and ghoulish!

Himawari

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The Japanese iPhone Apps: What’s out there?

Of course, the Apps Store is the best part. Everyday I’m searching for applications that’ll hopefully blow my mind, whether it’s useful tools or wacky games I can play on the toilet.
The one thing I’ve found is that the U.S.-born apps outnumber the Japanese ones. That’s because not as many people in Japan have an iPhone. Unlike here, Apple has tough competition in Japan. So when it comes to making apps, they’re not necessarily made for the iPhone. But that just makes me want to seek out those few cool Japanese apps even more!

Here are some of the more interesting ones:

Amamiya Momo ($2.99)

Meet Momo, a girl dressed in a cat outfit who lives inside your iPhone. You can poke her cheek, pat her head and even lift her skirt. Momo comes with 200 pre-programmed behavior patterns, so depending on how you treat her she can turn from happy to angry very quickly. Apparently, her mood changes depending on the time of day, so watch out!

iBBQLite (free trial)

The object of this game is to cook meat on the grill and hand it to customers. If it’s overcooked they’ll say in Japanese, “Ugh, this is awful!” If it’s undercooked, they’ll say, “What the heck is this!” So be sure to grill it just right. It’s a simple game but oh so addicting.

Harlequin novels (free trial)

There’s now a handful of romance-filled manga series at the disposal of your fingertips. Just do a keyword search for “harlequin” and out comes English-translated stories of love and heartbreak. The first chapter is free, but once they grab your attention you’ll have to pay to read the rest.

LadioTouch (free)

Now you can listen to Japanese radio! Up until now it’s been pretty limited to anime songs, but the range of genres have slowly widened. With this app I can now listen to one of Tokyo’s most popular stations, J-Wave, along with hundreds of other internet radio stations. Unfortunately, the listing is mostly in Japanese.

So what’s your favorite iPhone application? Let me know!

A Guilt-Free Phone

My cell phone is beeping to its demise and I can’t recharge it! I usually don’t keep my charger on me, so when I’m low on batteries I pray to the cellular gods to keep my phone running ’til at least sundown.

Wish I was in Japan. Then I’d get a Solar Phone SH002 by Sharp. It’s the first of its kind, recharging the battery under the sun so that you can wander for days in the desert and keep in touch with your BFF.

For every 10 minutes of golden rays, you get one minute of talk-time or 2 hours on standby, which isn’t bad if you’re the type who spends lots of time outdoors. Vampires be warned.

In true Japanese fashion, you get a nice array of colors to choose from: sky blue, prism white, and sparkling red. And as an added bonus, the phone is also waterproof (!?) — though water-boarding isn’t encouraged.

Compared to the iPhone, it doesn’t come with many apps but the ones that it does have will come in handy for sporty types: a pedometer and a tool to measure your golfing performance. I love the iPhone for its limitless vault of apps, but I also love this phone for its sheer ecological value. Maybe one of these days, the two will have offspring! \(^o^)/

Himawari

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How Novel: Forget Amazon’s Kindle; Read Books on Your Cell Phone

Imagine a long, melodramatic text message conversation filled with abbreviations and emoticons and you have a pretty good idea what keitai shosetsu is: novel-sized stories composed entirely on cell phones by amateur authors. What these Japanese writers (most of them young women, in their late teens to early 20s) lack in experience they make up for in brisk style. The addictive, tear-jerking tales are short on description, but long on drama and trauma. Heavily influenced by manga and graphic novels, the dialogue is quick and to the point and characterization is very light. Constant thumb-scrolling and tapping is required as each “page” has little room for text. The authors (who all go by single names, such as Yoshi, Rin, and Mika) tackle emotionally fraught issues like rape, pregnancy, death, failed romance, and prostitution – and, most importantly, overcoming all of the above.

I first heard about keitai shosetsu last year from the Galleycat publishing blog, and last month, articles also popped up in New York Times, London Times and Time Magazine. I think reporters are both curious about and disturbed by the phenomenon. It’s very tough for western literati to understand why anyone would want to read or write a full-length novel on a cell phone; surely the fall of civilization is at hand!

Then again, maybe not. It’s important to note that just because the stories start out on cell phones (where authors don’t earn anything), doesn’t mean they stay that way. Ever since Yoshi’s keitai shosetsu title “Deep Love” was published in traditional book form in 2002, selling 2.5 million copies and spawning a film and TV show, other cell phone novels have followed. One of the most successful is probably “Love Sky” (Koizora) by a young woman named Mika. In its original form, “Love Sky” was read by 20 million people on cell phones or computers, and when it was republished in book form, it became Japan’s top selling novel of 2007. It was also adapted into a movie. New cell phone books are downloadable from sites like Bunko Yomihodai (which offers a “library reading spree!”)

 

Sarah S.

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