Japanese mobile phone culture

A good run-down of current Japanese mobile phone culture at Wikipedia. In particular, a list of things you can do on a Japanese mobile. Some of the more interesting ones:

• E-money service and various certification functions through Untouched IC card (FeliCa etc.)
• Various services with NTT Docomo’s ‘osaifu-keitai (mobile phone with wallet function)’
• E-money service e.g. ‘Edy’
• Function as ‘Suica,’ which can be used for a season ticket and a train ticket
• Cmode: vending machines which can be used with QR code and ‘osaifu-keitai’ of a mobile phone

The subtleties of texting are also discussed. e.g.

One very distinct form of writing is called 'gyaru-moji' ('girls' characters'). For example Lt wouldn't correspond to the Latin characters 'L' and 't' but instead it would correspond to the hiragana け ('ke'). Notice that it looks very similar when written. Many hiragana, katakana and kanji are taken apart and reassembled using different characters including alphabet characters. It is unclear why this usage is now seen. Some believe that this started as a way of making secret messages that a quick peek wouldn't reveal, while others claim that it was just for fun. This can be related to the way the English language hacking culture uses 1337 language to hide the meaning of the words typed.