Jalinth

The Japanese market is quite different. The cellphones are leading to bleeding edge technology, extremely versatile, adapted to the Japanese language and usage, and have extreme market penetration. So Blackberry has difficulty in penetrating that market and most use their cellphones for email (plus so many other things). Not sure if I'd like to be the manager trying to Blackberrize Japanese staff.

yosithezet

We have an office in Japan with an employee who carries a Blackberry... in addition to his other company phones for voice and his personal phone. The Blackberry is checked a few times a day for email but that is it. Everything else is done with one of the other phones.

nishimark

I worked in a Japanese company for a few years, though quite a few years ago. Thankfully work for myself now. The pattern I noticed in the office was busy from 9:00-12:00 or so. Then lunch and after lunch the bosses would stay out and visit clients. So, 1:00-4:00 or so was very quiet in the office. One guy was quite adept at sleeping with his head on the desk in such a way so as to be able to look like he was working or wake up in a position that looked like work. After 4:00, it got real busy as the bosses started coming back in, then stayed busy until the big boss left for his evening socializing at around 7:00 or so. I went out with the big boss occasionally, which was always interesting. His usual (3 times a week, at least) pattern was dinner/drinking in regard to business, followed by drinking with friends that may be related to business, then drinking at his favorite hole in the wall, before going home. He typically got home at around 1 or 2 and was usually first in the office by 8:30. He lived at least an hour away from work and usually took a taxi home at night (paid for by the company).

joejones

On working hours:

nishimark's experience is pretty close to my own. A lot of the late-hour suits you see wandering around have been slacking around half the day and are out doing some sort of business development or simply greasing up their internal relationships. Business is extremely relationship-driven here.

On Blackberries:

The big stumbling block in Japan is that Japanese is just as easy to type on a 10-key as on a full QWERTY keyboard. Why lug around a large Blackberry when you can have a slimmer phone that's easier to use? Blackberries have become popular at foreign-owned companies where everyone is emailing each other in English, but for domestic-focused folks, a traditional phone is a much better solution. (And iPhones are sadly close to pessimal for Japanese input.)

Also, as noted above, Japan only has one Blackberry model to choose from at present, and it is total crap from both an aesthetic and usability perspective. The nice Blackberry handsets available in the US and Europe are simply not sold here.

nishimark

Some people think that Japanese are very hard working. Hah! They just work long hours doing meaningless chores to preserve unity (IMHO). I couldn't handle the "my company owns me" mentality after a while and can't imagine 30+ years of virtually no free time or vacation outside of the 10 days a year when everyone else is on vacation. (My rant is finished.)

yosithezet

I think the Blackberry Bold is now available in Japan.

Pureboy

Can you explain that one? AFAIK, text input is through romanji, which requires many letters of the English alphabet.

RichardInSF

From what I have seen looking at my neighbors on trains, a person using a numeric pad types in two keys and the phone gives a list of possible proposed kanji, which in most cases they can select from with one more keystroke. So for the 500 or so most common kanji, it's only three button pushes.

ksandness

Thirty years ago when I lived in Japan as a student, midnight to sunrise were the prime hours for gay social life. I didn't realize this until one time when I had to leave my apartment at 5AM on a winter morning in order to meet some friends for a day trip. There were a lot of men out on the street in various stages of inebriation, some of them obviously couples, some in drag.

When I remarked about this to one of the people I was meeting, he said that there were gay bars that were open only after midnight.

I don't know if this is still true, since I haven't actually lived full-time in Japan (or been out after midnight very much) since then.

At that time, there was still strong social pressure for everyone to get married and to use a matchmaker if they didn't find someone on their own, the idea being that marriage was the duty of every adult, not something one did for personal fulfillment. In such a setting, I imagine that there were a lot of closeted salarymen.

KIXman

On a 10-key, Japanese is input phonetically and pressing a key repeatedly cycles through the a-i-u-e-o sound.
Key "1" will cycle through the vowels a-i-u-e-o,
Key "2" will cycle through ka-ki-ku-ke-ko,
Key "3" through sa-shi-su-se-so
and so on.

So if I were to input something like "Kikkusuman" (that's me) , that would be input something like the following:

ka-KI
ta-ti-tu-te-to-<small tu to indicate consonant repetition>
ka-ki-KU
sa-shi-SU
MA
wa-wo-N

I would be pressing 6 keys for a total of 18 times.

As RichardInSF mentioned, after a number of keypresses the cellphone will make some proposals for the kanji / word it thinks you are trying to type in. This is based on your past input patterns and the context of what you are composing, and so greatly reduces the number of keypresses needed.

Sound complicated? Well not for Japanese; if you watch some people on the train their thumbs are like a blur working the keyboard. Some even find it faster to input Japanese than on a QWERTY keyboard, so some enterprising companies have even come up with cellphone-like keyboards as input devices for PCs:

http://reviewz.jp/cre8txt_keyboard.jpg

acregal

A former coworker of mine used to sit around before leaving (to have the impression of doing something). She would usually just sit around and just stare at the wall, or sometimes she would file through some papers to look busy. I also had many coworkers who blatantly used the internet for personal purposes or would pull out a manga or magazine and just start reading it. The company owns you mentality really sinks in when your company tells you that you're going to use one of your paid holidays next week as you're going to move to a different office (this happened to 3 people I know).

As for Japanese on phones, I find the 10-key is a lot easier than QWERTY.

railroadtycoon

I agree I find it pretty fast to input direct Japanese then doing romaji input.

romaji input k-o-n-n-i-c-h-i-h-a (11 inputs, seven different keys, plus enter)

Japanese input, as mentioned, the phone usually remembers and has a list of most used or logical ones depending on context, so on my phone right now I can write こんにちは　with 6 inputs (all with the same button), かきくけこ、once i get to こ,　こんにちは　pops up as one of the options and all I have to do is select it.

Q Shoe Guy

The predictive text on Japanese phones is fantastic and one can construct sentence strings from pop up menus!

Friend has Japanese Blackberry and is thinking of trading it in for another Japanese phone. The only available model up to a few months ago was/is
old and clunky ! Blackberry has partnered with NTT Docomo only thus limiting their market immediately, also they only sell really old low spec phones here!

SJUAMMF

Selecting it is not free of key pushes either, 2 or 3 at least?

valve bouncer

I'm practically illiterate in Japanese can and even I can construct simple message in Japanese. It's a win!