The one thing you notice when you spend time in Japan, especially Tokyo, is that everyone seems to use their mobile phones almost constantly.  In the UK the heavy phone users are mainly the perpetual texters and annoying kids listening to music through their tinny phone speakers on the bus.  Most other people keep their phones in the their pockets until they need them .

Compare that to Japan where almost everyone is a heavy phone user.  The thing is that compared to us, they have so many things to do on their phones.  Mobile phones are so interwoven with their culture that they’re an indispensable part of their daily lives in many different ways.

Here’s an example.  While in Tokyo I went to the biggest fireworks display of the Japanese calendar.  It happens by the river in the Asakusa district of the city and in the run-up to the start of the display a huge queue formed down the road that leads up to the main bridge in the area.  In order to give everyone a chance at seeing the fireworks, the police started a rolling blockade to move the crowd forward slowly, meaning people kept moving and everyone got see some of the display.

While the people around me were waiting to get to the area where the fireworks were visible they weren’t complaining of the delay, oh no, they were using their phones to watch the fireworks being broadcast live on TV!  Then, when they could see the fireworks themselves, they switched their phones to camera mode to take pictures and video.  Once past the fireworks they switched back to TV.  I dare say when these people made their way home on the Tokyo Metro they used their phones to pay for the journey.  The Japanese can actually have their Suica pass (their equivalent to London’s Oyster Card) built into their mobile phone!  They just swipe their phones over the reader at the turnstile and they’re in!

So why is mobile culture so prevalent over there while in the UK most people don’t even read their emails on their phones?  It’s partly due to the history of the mobile web in Japan (see this recent post on Techcrunch for more background) but right now it seems like Japan is staying ahead because their phone networks innovate.  Pick up this month’s catalogue from any UK operator and you’ll find the key ‘innovation’ they’re pushing is mobile web access.  The main thing they compete on is price and the number of minutes and texts they give you.

In Japan they seem to compete on innovation.  While I was in Japan here’s some of the things I saw being promoted by the networks:

- Softbank were promoting waterproof phones.  They even had a TV ad featuring Cameron Diaz stood in a sinking rowboat to promote them.

- AU By KDDI had a range of phones for children in their catalogue.  They included features like a cord on the back that children could pull to immediately phone their parents (’Pull To Talk’, if you like!) and GPS tracking so that parents can track their kids’ whereabouts.  Interestingly, this tracking feature was also marketed as being useful to married couples!

- NTT DoCoMo had a voice recognition system that not only converted speech to text but also translated Japanese to English and vice-versa.  Imagine Spinvox crossed with Babelfish.

- One-Seg, the main mobile TV service in Japan, is available on various networks and not only allows watching TV but recording it too.

With all this to do with their phones, it’s no wonder the Japanese spend so long using them.  Here in the UK our first phone with TV reception, the Nokia N96, is launching on the 1st of October.  The thing is, it’ll take a good long while yet before this technology hits the mainstream.  Even then, we’ll still be hopelessly behind the latest Japanese innovations.

It’s a sad thing to say but we might never catch up.  If there was a market for it we could have all this technology right now.  We’re on a par with Japan when it comes to things like HDTV and games consoles but they won’t sell us their new phones because they’re just too advanced for our tastes.  It’s our attitude to mobile technology that needs to improve before we have any hope of reaching any kind of parity with Japan’s mobile lifestyle.