Cell Phone Mail
OK, I plead guilty as charged: I’m a curmudgeon and a throwback. I don’t have a cell phone.
Still, occasionally I exchange e-mail with keitai owners, and one of the things I’ve learned over time is that sending long, meandering, ponderous, in-detail messages doesn’t do much good: they tend to get cut off at the other end of the duct after the first 200-and-something characters.
In articles such as this and this, Mizuko Ito does a good job exploring the culture springing up around Japan’s mobile devices. For example:
Before initiating a call to a keitai, they will, almost without exception, begin with a text message to determine availability; the new social norm is that you should “knock before entering.” By sending messages like “Can you talk on the phone now?” or “Are you awake?” text messagers spare each other the rude awakening and disruption of a sudden phone call.
What Ito-sensei describes here is in line with Japanese tradition; it’s very considerate and polite.
This politeness startled me today, however. Last night I sent an e-mail to a Japanese person whose address I found on the Web while looking for some specific information. I checked my mail first thing in the morning and found a reply to my query. It started with an apology for sending me e-mail in the middle of the night — as, indeed, the message was time-stamped 3:34 am. Yet hold on a minute: an apology for sending e-mail in the middle of the night? I’m sure it’s the first time I ever saw such a thing. It made me reflect, though: is it inappropriate to send e-mail after bedtime if the recipient might be using a cell phone as a mail client?
Somebody please clue me in!
Are there any other things the oyaji set ought to observe?
Comments
Hi pketh,
Back in March this year, Kevin in Tokyo put up a valiant defense of his cellphonelessness, saying things like, “it’s only a necessity if you have one.”
But that was back in March. He has one now. Sure, he claims it isn’t his own and he’s only borrowing it from the company, or something. But everyone knows that’s just a big black lie.
Phone-mailing is convenient for me. When I make a phonecall to someone, I usually wonder if he is sleeping, if she is busy and so on. But in mailing, I don’t have to worry. Those who receive messages can read them when they want.
pketh :: September 27, 2003
thanks for the article Rudolf - I enjoyed it quite a bit. I remember having a similar defense against cellphone proliferation but it became a necessity to everyone else so the result was social exclusion :(
dew :: September 27, 2003
I live in Singapore and lots of people are using SMS, it’s 5 cents (US$1=SG$1.70), we’re given 360 free messages usually and there’s no charge for receiving SMS =)
pketh :: September 28, 2003
damn dew that’s sweet!
I’m gonna blog on this topic right now - thanks for the idea :D
dew :: September 28, 2003
wow, I given someone an idea =)
I found an interesting article on Yahoo News (Japanese). It says that in Asia Filipino tend to use cellphone-mails for communication and to show their feelings compared with people in other countries. They are said to use SMS often for love, quarrels, and partings.
While most Americans drool over Japan’s mobile phone services and curse their own service providers for being about five years behind Japan, others, like Tim Clark, worry that in Japan cell phone usage threatens media literacy (yes, that’s another Japan Media Review link): young people, Clark says, spend so much time with their keitai that they never learn how to use the Internet at large. Whether that’s true or not, I think the least you can say is that Japan’s Internet looks different from everyone else’s Internet for the presence and prevalence of these devices: they tend to create the “walled gardens” Clark writes about.
I don’t have an opinion on whether or not Filipinos are more intimate over their cell phones than the Japanese. My impression (based on very limited experience) is that they have a more international outlook and that they tend to make more frequent use of other channels of communication besides cell phones.
Some time ago I was following The Protagonist Boards, an online community admirably run by Lauryn, now a university student in Manila. The population on that board, according to a poll they once ran, is about 50% North Americans and 30% South East Asians. Most of them are either high school or university students. The thing I find striking — striking, that is, by comparison with what I see in Japan — is the range of media they use: they create their own Web sites and chat rooms, they use Instant Messaging, e-mail, texting and cell phones in one big amazing mix and, above all, across national borders, beyond their island.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that just isn’t happening in Japan, where everyone seems to be wedged in their tight little in-groups, both online and off. In Japan things never seem to get beyond the odd English teacher fixing up students with overseas e-mail penpals via one of the English-as-a-Second-Language Web sites that teachers read about in their How to Use the Internet books, and even that is rare enough.
I once sent a couple of students to join the Protagonist Boards and participate in the discussions there because I believe the one thing Japanese students of English most desperately need (and which, strangely, they don’t get from the way they use the Internet, which is a global medium, after all) is authentic communication with their international peers. Forced to study the language under teachers many of whom have a better grasp of the textbooks and the exam questionnaires than of the language and its actual usage, the students hardly ever get to use English in settings where they can use it to talk or write about the stuff that really matters to them.
So, I’m flying off at a tangent here, but anyway: for a bit of communicative interaction with young people across the globe, join The Protagonist Boards and say hi to Lauryn from that cranky university teacher in Japan. Or, Wakako-san: send your high school students…
Netiquette applies.
Well, some of my students were interested in corresponding with students in other countries, and I recommended them to find e-pals. They are exchanging emails now.
Ruedi, as you say, not many Japanese students are used to using and managing computers. When they surf the net to get information, they dare not examine it. “Passive” you know. I want them to choose right information and to find which is true and which is not.
However, I don’t think we should all have own web sites and be keen to computers. Computers are a useful tool, so if we can take advantage of it when in need, it is OK. That’s my idea.
kevin :: October 7, 2003
It is true. My cell phone is from my company.
I have used it to talk to people in the company 90% of the time. The other 10% was to talk to my girlfriend, but only because with the company picking up the bill, it is cheaper to use it than my regular phone.
I *did* use it to moblog my trip. But that was research! What I discovered, was that even though I enjoyed moblogging then, when I didn’t have daily access to a computer, now that I do, and can blog with a keyboard, I have no urge to moblog.
As for sending emails at night… I learned the hard way when I set up a mailout for a client (completely opt-in) and the next morning had hundreds of pissed-off mails from people who recieved the mail on their mobile in the middle of the night. Now I only send spam to mobile users during the day.
Sheesh — I knew it: the world is going nuts.
For the record: you can post comments to this weblog any day of the week, any hour of the day. You’re totally not depriving anyone of their sleep, honest.
oli :: October 28, 2003
RE: why should someone apologise for sending an email late at night?
Because if it’s to a cellphone, and the cellphone isn’t turned off, it’s possible you might wake them up when the cellphone plays the “a new email arrived” sound. That’s another reason everyone hates spam emails in Japan (the main one is you have to pay for them)
peace - oli
PS at least that’s what I think the reason is ;-)
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wow. I now soo wish I was living in Japan :) Here in Toronto pretty much no-one uses text messaging, mainly because the mobile phone companies screw you over w/ the costs. 25cents a message is very costly and so even though my cell plan gives me about 100free msgs a month — i find that there is no one to share it with because there is also another charge for receiving messages :(.