It's a sunny day in Tokyo and Saya Kato is exquisitely attuned to the style of the moment, wearing a filmy vest over her T-shirt and shorts, sporting a straw fedora and carrying not one, but two cell phones.
The first, emerging from a vast pink bag, is a slim, honey-colored basic model that enables Kato to enjoy long chats with friends who have the same plan. The second is a hot-pink "Sony Ericsson" that connects her to everybody else. With it, Kato can access the Internet, read the news, watch television, and update her blog and her diary. She can also write and read cell phone novels. However, most importantly she can text her broader social circle.
When asked how many hours sh e spends on a cell phone daily, she says simply: "All the time!"
Around her are infinitely more teenage girls on exponentially more cell phones, often personalized with rhinestones and charm-decked straps. In Japan, Web-connected "Smartphones" became widely available about a decade earlier than they did in the United States. Girls quickly became the most incessant and creative users, driving the way phones are designed and the extras they come loaded with today.
The country's cell-obsessed culture now takes its cues from the gaggles of young women carrying multiple phones. Twenty percent of Japanese high school girls own two phones, and some own even more.
In Japan, girls were the ones who first discovered all the ways to live life through a cell phone. They learned that the best way to receive and text in the bathtub is to put your phone in a plastic bag, which protects it in case of dropping, but still lets you type.
When in public, girls run their phone batteries down so quickly that convenience store managers have taken to taping over outlets to thwart them from plugging in chargers.
"They've become so cell phone reliant," said Yohei Harada, a cultural researcher that "if they have a paper due, they'll write the paper on their cell phones and send it in."
Source: Yomiuri News, L Mundy 2010-03-31
Kato says the time she spends on her cell-phones is, "All the time."
She made me ponder about where our awareness should be all the time? Most certainly, it must be in my Creator-God and his purposes for my life! What are you addicted to? Do you know God? Do you allow Him to lead and guide you and do you put Him first! I know I need to be careful always to not let 'things' get in the way of Him.
Also my friends no matter how engrossed you might be in your work, studies or play at all times you need to be in intimate contact with your God!
Ps 119:27 Make me to understand the way of thy precepts: so shall I talk of thy wondrous works.
