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Tap, tap tap, the indisputable sound of inside a Japanese train, on the sidewalk, in a park, in a movie theater, in a restaurant, almost everywhere you'll hear it; the successive tap of cell phone texting.
According to my Japanese Antiquity notes, there was an emperor Keitai, who reigned from approximately 510 until 527. I don’t know anything else about this emperor, other than he actually did exist (Japan, in their quest to prove that their imperial lineage was unbroken, made up a good nine emperors, and taught it as straight fact until after World War II), but whenever anybody mentions poor emperor Keitai, everybody giggles.
While I’m sure that the kanji is different, keitai is the term for cell phone. The etymology isn’t too hard to figure out: keitai literally translates as “mobile,” and the full name of a cell phone is a keitai denwa, or “mobile phone.” Of course, many things in Japan are keitai, but I say keitai, you say “overpriced ringtone.
Everybody in Japan has a cell phone. Little children have cell phones. Adults have cell phones. Lewd old men that hang around the train stations all day have cell phones. At any given moment, half of Japan is busily typing away on their cell phones, texting each other. The other half would be texting, but their phones have probably died. Or they themselves have.
Along with everybody having a cell phone, comes cell phone etiquette. And considering how I have enough material on cell phones to be writing this, it’s quite extensive.
As an aside, I hate cell phones in America. I have one of course, everybody I know has one, even my grandmother. I just never take mine with me anywhere. I get yelled at constantly at home for leaving my cell phone on my desk next to the landline. What, they yell, is the point, damn you?
Well, the point is I don’t want you to contact me that easily. I don’t have to be at everybody’s beck and call every minute of every day. So nyah.
But in Japan, I always have my keitai. I charge it faithfully every night, take it dutifully with me wherever I go. Part of this complete flip flop in opinion is probably due to the fact that, where I live, I don’t have Internet access. This is difficult, as I’ve had the Internet in my American home since I was in sixth grade, and had an Internet-capable computer in my room since the beginning of high school. That’s about ten years of the world at my fingertips, and seven of them with it mere steps away from my bed.
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