My new ketai

The reason I needed a new ketai was because somewhere between my parents house and the Taipei airport, I lost my old one. At the time I was upset because I knew it would be expensive to replace my old phone and I had no way to call Tigerpapa and let him know that we missed our connecting flight and wouldn`t be in Okinawa until the next day. I REALLY had no way to call him because his phone number was programmed into my old phone and I hadn`t memorized it (11 Numbers people!). Thankfully, I had memorized my lovely Scottish friend`s number and contacted her to relay the message. Anyhoo, when I returned to Okinawa the first thing we did was go into Softbank (nice name for a cell phone company eh?) to get a new ketai. There was a long list of phones to choose from starting from the most expensive (best quality, most functions) to least expensive. The least expensive were each aproximately 24,000 yen ($270). I had narrowed it down to one of two that I liked when suddenly the clerk jumped up and said, "I do believe you can get the BEST phone!!". Imagine our surprise! So, we waited while the store clerk disappeared into the back room to do his calculations and confer with his boss. He came out smiling and said that since we had insurance on our contract we could indeed get the best phone and it would be \6000 cheaper than the lowest priced phone: 18,000 yen! Woohoo! So, I got it:



It might not look like much but boy is it awesome. There is a 5.0 megapixel digital camera (and video camera). It seems better than my Canon IXY. See how it works:




Flipping like the whippety little snippet it is!



There is an MP3 player in there that lets me download 200 songs or so and, if I want, I can watch television. The sounds, alerts, patterns, and ringtones are amazing. If I receive a text message from Tigerpapa, it sounds like a beer can popping and being pored into a glass. I can also put the phone on "speaker phone" so everyone in the room can hear and talk to the person on the other line (useful for when the tiger kids are fighting over who gets to talk to daddy). This also means I can drive along and talk without having to stick anything in my ear. I can use the phone in almost any country too. Lastly, I can talk for free to anyone who also uses softbank. Oh yeah, I can make "video calls" as well! Technology is amazing.

The only problem I`ve had is actually quite embarrassing to share....but I will. I had the phone for 5 days before Tigerpapa moved to Tokyo so I hadn`t used it very much because he is the person I primarily talk to on the phone. The first time he called me I thought; "it is really difficult to hear him" so I went into the "settings" folder on my phone and adjusted the earpiece volume to the maximum strength. I continued to have problems hearing anyone who called me. I had to turn off all outside sounds and cover my other ear and still it was really hard to hear. Hmmm? I thought something must be wrong with the phone so I asked my LSF`s husband if he would mind going to the Softbank store with me to help me explain what is wrong with the phone and see if we could get it fixed. He obliged and off we went. We get to the store and explain the problem to the clerk. She confirms that it is indeed very hard to hear and that something is wrong. Suddenly she starts to laugh....LOUDLY. If you know Japanese people, you know this is not normal especially when the person laughing loudly is a store clerk who is supposed to be serving you. She points to the face of the phone and asks if I had put a protective covering on it. I said, "no" and then remembered that Tigerpapa was talking about doing that for me and we had indeed bought the protective sheet the day before he left. He must have put the sheet on my phone when I wasn`t paying attention! And, he had put the sheet all the way to the top of the face of the phone covering the earphone in the process. I felt like such a LOSER! We all started laughing as the store clerk passed over a pair of scissors for me to correct the problem on my own.

So, really there are no problems with this phone at all. Except it takes quite awhile to recharge. I don`t mind though because the battery lasts a really long time once it is charged.