Lost In Translation Tidbit : Electronics

I was half expecting Japan to be way ahead on everything, but it's not really the case. Here are a few points regarding Japans love affair with Consumer Electronics

• Their mobile phones (Keitai) are, until recently, all CDMA. They are switching to 3G now, but all the phones are BRICKS. Noone uses Nokia, no Razor phones, hardly anyone uses Ericsson. They all use these random phones I have never seen. All clamshell style and huge.
• Their phones have awesome features provided by the network. Like GPS, Email (real email), Fast internet etc etc. They even have these little squares of black and white dots on billboards / posters that you can take a shot of with the phone and it automatically opens the website of the advert for you. Pretty neat.
• Wii is everywhere. They Love it. The ads are great too.
• PS3 is NOWHERE. They don't advertise it at all, and the stands at the stores are full of games / hardware but noone seems to be paying much attention. I was expecting saturation bombing of adverts for it and people just going crazy, but I looks like they can't give it away. It is PHYSICALLY HUGE by way. I am talking MASSIVE and it really isn't all that impressive in terms of the demos I have seen.
• As there is no room on the train you don't usually see people working on laptops, but Sharp laptops seem popular. Most people have these little clamshell PDAs which I think can do email.
• While there is heaps of electronic tech, its hard to tell what it does as its all in Japanese, including the markings and labels on buttons / the unit, pretty much rendering any purchase by westerners as useless.
• As I said in a post before, they love their in dash DVD and GPS units.

In general I am suprised that they really aren't that CRAZILY into their gadgets. They do love their phones though.