Technology update

Hot on the heels of the arrival of the internet comes the excitement of the new mobile phone.

When I first arrived I had to get an evil pre-paid mobile phone because I didn’t have the proper visa. Actually the phone itself wasn’t too bad — especially compared to the antiquated old thing I was using in Australia — but the idea was always to upgrade to a shiny new one as soon as the visa came through. (At one stage I was considering getting an iPhone because the phone company was running a special campaign in January, but unfortunately that finished before my visa came through.)

However the new phone I got on Friday is a pretty good consolation prize. First of all, it looks like a phone on one side and like a camera on the other; when you open up the screen and flip it around, it turns into an 8 MP camera with a screen on the back. You can also pull out its tiny little aerial and watch TV on it. It has all the usual features like the internet, emails, games and music, news and weather updates; but unlike my old phone, you can actually see what’s happening and read the text, which is kind of handy. It also has Japanese and English dictionaries. It can scan and convert Japanese and English text (such as a newspaper), and can even read a business card and enter the details in your address book. You can store money in it and use it as a credit card to pay for things, or to go through the turnstiles at the train station. You can even link it to your kid’s phone and track their movements by GPS (Ruby’s going to love that).

There are probably heaps of other things that you can do with it but I’ve only had 24 hours so far. (Oh yes, I almost forgot: it also has a nice bright light on the back that you can use as a torch.)

But the best thing is that this beastie is already considered old technology (the latest model has a 12 MP camera as opposed to a pathetic 8 MB and comes in lots of different colours), which means that the monthly repayments are precisely ¥0.

So it feels good to have finally joined the mobile technolgy revolution, especially as I was lagging so far behind in Australia. I really felt in need of a new gadget, and Japan is definitely the place to satisfy that need.

Dunno what I’ll do when I get bored with the phone though; I might have to buy one of those new iPad thingies.