No mobile fanatic’s trip to Japan would be complete without a report on the latest fashionable and high-functioning keitai. Even if it’s only playing with dummy display models or pouring through the catalogs I brought home with me, one can always dream…

DoCoMo, as always, has a bewildering choice of mobiles in their product portfolio. But the one that caught my eye was the N-09A, part of their SMART series. Unlike the BlackBerry Bold these babies come with real leather on the casing — or metal or wood (?!)

Though the clamshell or flip-phone is traditionally the design of choice for the Japanese mobile user, sliders like the WILLCOM LU (link in Japanese, sorry…) are steadily becoming more popular. I like the LU’s big buttons and chunky, squared-off look.

Softbank — or more accurately, Panasonic — takes the slider up a notch with an awesome plum-on-black colour scheme on this 940P. And that scroll wheel on the front panel is notched for variable speed and better accuracy.

But I think the best-looking handset I saw in Tokyo was this G9, part of KDDI’s new iida line. It’s worth visiting their site to see the other ground-breaking designs there — that is if you’re willing to wait for a ginormous Flash movie to load…

So which one is your favourite? Or maybe you know of something in Japan that I missed? Let me know in the comments below!

Far be it from me to tell RIM their business — I bought some of their stock back when it was trading below $75 CAD and haven’t looked back — but their latest handset, the Pearl Flip 8220 announced this week at CTIA, is a bit of a head-scratcher…

Don’t get me wrong here, I think this is a far more attractive handset than the original candybar Pearl, and had I trialled this little number instead of my fugly 8700 I might have stuck it out with RIM just a little longer. I think a clamshell BlackBerry is a stroke of genius and I expect it will sell like gangbusters in North America and would humble even the mighty iPhone in Japan.

If you didn’t already know this the Japanese mobile market is clamshell-crazy — by my entirely unscientific calculations flip phones outsell all other form factors by about a bajillion to one. The folks at RIM have even included a loop on their first flip for a keitai charm, pointed out in the graphic above.

But there’s one bewildering problem: The Pearl Flip doesn’t do 3G.

The BB Bold, which is already available in Canada (suck it, rest of the world!) has tri-band 3G, so I would have expected subsequent models to follow suit. Instead, our Japanese friends are falling over themselves to witness a DoCoMo variant same fugly 8700 that I threw to the ground in disgust before abandoning it.

I suppose the SureType keypad might also not translate so well for Japanese character input, but in all other respects I bet Japan would flip over this latest RIM job.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go turn myself in to the pun police…

A typical Japanese handset

Kudos to the dedicated reporters at AppleInsider for their recent fluff piece, proudly proclaiming that the new iPhone 3G rocks the Japanese smartphone market.

Here’s the synopsis of this fine bit of reportage:

Mobile providers in Japan are crediting the launch of Apple’s iPhone 3G with dramatically shifting large numbers of subscribers between providers.

Such a bold statement would have you believe that Japanese handset makers are simultaneously committing seppuku at the arrival of the JeebusPhone on their native soil. There’s just one little problem here: While not technically incorrect, AppleInsider’s premise is far more truthiness than truth.

Following the first external link leads to a story about KDDI losing subscribers to rival carrier SoftBank because of the iPhone. The page also states that SoftBank currently boasts more than double the subscribers of the mighty DoCoMo — a bit hard to believe, given that DoCoMo reached the impressive milestone of 50 million subscribers back in 2005. In fact, the company experienced a 41% growth in profits for Q1 2008, and continues to lead the world in revenue from mobile data.

AppleInsider then proceeds to list Japan-specific handset features like “QC Codes” (actually QR) and the “impractical” 1seg broadcast video service. Impractical or not, 1seg is actually quite popular in Japan, and 20 million handsets supporting the free service have been sold there.

And finally, there’s this little chesnut:

“Just the interface itself is enough reason for me to buy the iPhone,” said Andrew Shuttleworth in a Macworld story exploring the iPhone’s potential in the Japanese market.

Good for you, Andrew Shuttleworth! I guess the fact that, (1) you shill for MacWorld and (2) you speak and read English, just like the owner of the only iPhone I actually saw in the wild when I was in Japan last month, doesn’t give you any kind of bias on such matters?

While I can’t fault AppleInsider for telling zombie Mac fanboys exactly what they want to hear, I can tell you from firsthand experience that rumours of the iPhone supplanting the most advanced mobile phone market in the world have been greatly exaggerated…

At first glance the two official DVD releases of Hatch-chan the blogging cat seem little more than a shrewd cash-grab by two pet owners and aspiring internet-preneurs. But repeated viewings of these cultural curiosities reveal a nothing short of a cinematic meisterwerk and damning condemnation of our society’s slide into the abyss of rampant consumerism.

And I should know, because I’m a film school graduate. So there.

Volume 1 of Hatch-chan, The Movie — IMDb reference unavailable, for some reason — Hatch-chan assumes the role of rampant consumer, flying over the Tokyo skyline while poised to squeeze out a giant cat turd on one of the world’s most populous cities… Talk about a carbon footprint!

As the film progresses we see Hatch-chan deconstruct the very notion of consumerism itself. As our feline protagonist endures an endless barrage of ribbon and tape the message is clear: The shiny gift wrapping that we tear through reveals nought but an empty, vapid experience within. Or to put it another way: Why spend money on a gift when they’re just going to play with the box?

In Hatch-chan 2, Electric Boogaloo — I don’t read Japanese but I assume that’s the title — our fallen hero shows us firsthand the trappings of celebrity, wandering the echoey halls of his cardboard cat castle alone.

The filmmakers’ knowledge of cinema history is also on display here, with a clever nod to the famous finale of Orson Welles’ Lady from Shanghai. And with a simple addition of a fish-eye lens the grotesque dystopia of Hatch-chan’s high-rise home becomes all too apparent, and almost too much to bare.

At roughly the equivalent of $20 CAD each you might at first blush think that of the Hatch’chan films as frivolous kitsch or possibly even a blatant rip-off; hopefully I have demonstrated that this is anything but the case.

Sooo… Anyone want to buy these off of me?

Sky Burger

On my last full day in Tokyo I finally took some time to enjoy the view from my 18th-floor room, with a little help from a local burger chain…

Click here for the official legend of the distant skyline and be sure to check out my other Japan photos in a dedicated Flickr set. You can also watch my own informal 30-second tour below, plus see other videos on my YouTube Channel.

And finally, there’s a slew of micro-blog postings I made while on the trip (Jaiku is currently my favourite service), which I haven’t yet figured out how to integrate into this site. I’m working on it…