"It's convenient."
"It's a pain in the ass."
"It's like a little magic stick in your pocket that you can use to talk to people anywhere."

Like it or not, keitai have become a way of life in Tokyo. Being able to meet your friends on the fly, cut business deals from the sidewalk or take advantage of services ranging from weather forecasts to daily horoscopes has made them the thing to have. And unlike in other parts of the world, where dropping a cell phone on your foot actually hurts, Japanese keitai are tiny, unobtrusive and easy to tote around.

Keitai come in all colors and styles from simple to futuristic. Nokia's DP-154EX, for example, looks less like a phone and more like something Martians would use to kill us. As of late, they've become omnipresent with constantly evolving new functions and services ranging from useful to only-in-Japan bizarre.

Most people use keitai for realizing loosely-constructed social plans in the messy grid of Tokyo. But now a host of new features has made the keitai more than just a telephone. It's an "Information Accessory".


WHICH ONE SHOULD I BUY?
Choose your phone by its features. I know it seems tough - you go to the keitai store, and they've got so many models that you could stone a small mob to death with all the products on display. But don't get confused, most keitai basically do the same thing-number storage, caller ID function, speed-dial, voice mail and so on. The differences are in a handful of special features, some gimmicky, some useful. Also bear in mind that keitai models and features are subject to change quickly in fashion-fickle Japan, where new phones hit the market every three to five months. Here's a rundown of current special features, which we'll place in two categories:

Special features that might be useful:
- Bilingual Function. Switches your display from Japanese to English. An obvious boon to the kanji-challenged among as.
- Call Charge. Pushing a button shows you how much your last call cost you and your total bill for this month.
- Voice Recognition. Lets you call numbers out of the directory by just saying the name.
- Alarm Function. Having your own personal alarm is handy if you're crashing at someone else's place, or if you've got a long train ride and are afraid you'll sleep past your stop. Just check the time to your stop on the station chart, and set it to go off.
- Speakerphone. Hands-free operation. Useful if you're one of the lucky few who's actually got a car over here.
- Distinctive Display Colors. Lets you categorize your stored numbers into groups, such as "work" and "social". When you receive a work-related call the screen turns red, social calls turn it green. Also has separate ringing tones for each.

Special features that might not be so useful:
- Built-in Games. Blackjack, slot machines, and primitive Pong-like diversions. With the tiny display and rudimentary graphics, these games are probably loads of fun if you're in jail or trapped in 1975.
- Musical ringing tones. Everything from Beethoven's Fifth to the Star Wars theme to "Love Me Tender."
- Your own recordable ringing tone. Ex frat-boys will probably think it riotous to fart into the microphone.
- Mobile karaoke. Oh, for chrissakes.

Also on the market, but not yet as popular, is a special plug-in ear piece that lets you leave the phone in your pocket and talk hands-free. A microphone is integrated with the connecting wire. The downside? With no phone in sight, it looks like you're talking to yourself. On top of that, you can get the obvious call waiting, call forwarding, three-way calling, even fax retrieval.

And, the three most requested physical features for keitai:
- "Flip-Door." Flipping open the lid automatically turns the phone on, closing it shuts it off. Beats having to hunt-and-peck for the little green button every time the phone rings.
- "Multi-Function Key." A four-way directional button that enables you to scroll through menus both horizontally and vertically. Functional, but boring - technology so plain the Amish would use it.
- "Jog-Dial." This ingenious little ribbed wheel on the side of the phone enables you to scroll through your listings of people's numbers. When you get to the one you want, you press the wheel and it dials automatically.


SO HOW MUCH DO THESE PHONES RUN?
While phones with the above-mentioned features run from JY3000 to JY10000, there are cheaper ones available at the lower end. Like a smile at McDonald's, you can even get some phones for free - without, it seems, even purchasing a calling plan And while these dowdy units won't be mistaken for Italian design, hey, you get what you pay for.


HOW DO THE CALLING PLANS WORK?
Typically, calling plans have a one-time installation fee of approximately JY2000-JY3000, and a monthly fee that includes a certain amount of talk time, beyond which you pay at a set rate. Below are the most popular calling plans from each of the four major service providers. A careful perusal of the monthly bill will tell you if you're getting your money's worth, or if your mouth is bigger than your wallet.

IDO "Komikomi Plan S." JY3900 a month, includes 30 minutes. Extra time, JY40/minute.
Tu-Ka (pronounced "tsu-ka") "Shabero Plan." JY3800 a month, includes 40 minutes. Extra time, JY35-JY40/minute, depending on the time of day.
J-Phone "Talk Pack." JY4200 a month, includes 50 minutes. Extra time, JY40/minute.
DoCoMo "Plan A." JY3400 a month, no time included. Rates are JY14-JY40/minute, depending on the time of day. The cheapest times to call are when everyone else is asleep, i.e. in the wee hours, which is great for prank callers looking to economize. What's more, if your bill tops JY5000 you automatically get a discount of between five and twenty percent of the total, depending on how much time you spent yapping. (In the stores and brochures, the DoCoMo plans are far more sophisticated-looking than the other companies', but in practice they work out to cost roughly the same.)

YEAH, BUT HOW MUCH WILL I ACTUALLY PAY?
On average, monthly bills run from JY3000 for casual users to over JY10000 for social butterflies. People who scarcely use the phone can get plans with cheaper monthly charges than the ones listed above.

A random sampling of estimated monthly bills and daily calls made:

Tetsuo, 22, clothing store employee: JY4500 a month, two or three calls a day.
Kenjiro, 23, cook: JY10000 a month, five 30 minute calls every day.
Melissa, 27, singer: JY4000 each month, three to five calls daily.
Hideko, 26, translator: JY6000 a month, two calls a day, more on the weekend.
Ippo, 25, unemployed: JY7000 a month, 2-3 calls a day.
Maki, 21, student: JY8500 per month, 3-4 calls a day.
Cami, 26, soap maker: JY7000-JY16000 per month, 5-10 calls a day.
Reiko, 26, dept. store saleswoman: JY3000 a month, 1 call a day.
Andy, 24, Aikido instructor: JY5000-6000 a month, 3-4 calls daily.

IS IT TRUE THAT KEITAI RECEPTION IS POOR?
The sound quality varies between service providers and may even vary widely from call to call. While NTT DoCoMo is rumored to have the worst connections, the fact is that a load of different things can affect the reception, from surrounding buildings to trains passing nearby to people that have metal plates in their head. And even at its best, you'll still know you're talking on a cell phone by the "I'm-calling-you- from-the-bottom- of-a-well" acoustic effect. You'll never mistake it for the clarity of a regular house-phone.


WHAT ELSE CAN I DO WITH A KEITAI BESIDES MAKE PHONE CALLS?
In addition to the keitai functions listed above, you can take advantage of a host of innovative features dreamt up by the service providers. For example, DoCoMo's latest breakthrough lets you check your bank balance and transfer money for JY20-JY30 per call and a monthly fee of JY300. (The catch? You've gotta buy a special phone.) And nowadays you can send and receive e-mail through your phone, although keitai keypads are better suited to sending "Battleship" moves than dashing off extended correspondence.

The features get much more interesting than that, though. From hi-tech to who-the-hell-thought-this-one-up, here's an idea of what they're selling:
- Fortune telling and horoscopes. For when the tarot cards just aren't cutting it.
- Automatic stock notifications. For those who live and die by the Dow.
- Sports play-by-play. Good for the gambling man.
- Flower delivery. Nothing says "I love you" like dialing *8743.
- Weather forecasts. Never have to buy a 7-11 umbrella again.
- Medical information helpline. For those nagging questions and burning sensations.
- The Last Train. Avoid getting stuck with the 5am Hangover Rush Hour.
- Fishing information. The fellas at Tsukiji must love this one.
- University class schedules. For the student-on-the-go.
- Wedding arrangements. Okay listen, if you're making wedding plans so often that you need it at the touch of a button, maybe you should get rid of the keitai and move into a convent.
- Celebrity Gossip. Useful features like this can let you put off getting a life for a good ten or twenty years.
- Lightning forecasts. For the Benjamin Franklin in all of us.
- Airline reservations. Now we're living in the future. My personal favorite.
- Information about pachinko parlor openings. Because a new one might open up while you're in transit from one parlor to another.


WHAT WILL KEITAI BE ABLE TO DO IN THE FUTURE?
Features reportedly in the works are infrared capability for wireless modem links with personal computers, voluntary tracking devices that send your location to friends trying to meet up with you, and an integrated GPS system that would inform you of, for example, famous restaurants in your current vicinity.
But what would you like keitai to do, if they could do anything?

Tetsuo, 22, clothing store employee: "I want to be able to watch television on my keitai."
Hideko, 26, translator: "House functions, like being able to turn off the gas and unlock the door remotely."
Shigeo, 24, keitai salesman: "007-type stuff. All kinds of cool gadgets would flip out of it."
Andy, 24, Aikido sensei: "Videophone capability and some kind of voice-translation feature."
Maki, 21, student: "I don't see the necessity of adding more functions to it. What more do we need? It's only a keitai!"

Me, I'd just be happy if people using keitai would watch their manners in the future.


WHAT ARE BAD KEITAI MANNERS?
People who let keitai ring in movie theaters should be slapped. People who start talking on them in movie theaters should be slapped and sterilized. Also, people on the sidewalk who bump into you because they're so engaged in a keitai conversation that they fail to watch where they're going should slowly be steered towards an open manhole.


Translation services by Hideko Fuchigami. Special thanks to Shigeo Ochiai of the Nexus Hit Shop. Tel: 03-3463-9780