My first (pre-paid) Japanese phone

I bought my first Japanese mobile phone recently in Tokyo's Harajuku neighborhood. It's a sweet little Sharp 201SH candy bar from SoftBank with pre-paid service. The phone was about US$40 and then I bought US$30 of pre-paid service, which includes the ability to receive (free in Japan) and make voice calls, receive and send email and SMS. It's a pretty nice little package for the price. Way to go SoftBank! It's been interesting trying to figure out how to operate the user interface (UI) on this little device. The mobile UI conventions used in most Japanese phones are quite different from Western mobile UIs.

Currently the third largest mobile network operator in Japan, SoftBank really seems to be up and coming with some nice offerings, including some sweet HTC (Windoz Mobile 6) QWERTYs and Nokia N73s, along with the usual JP cool phones. In Japan, all the carriers are really pushing TV and streaming video on their phones now. Fast 3G data networks ROCK!

While I was waiting for SoftBank to activate my phone (less than an hour), I walked around in Harajuku and Omotesando and visited the KDDI Designing Studio. It's sort of a mix between mobile device showroom and carrier flagship store.