There was a time when Japanese commuters left home in the morning clutching a newspaper and a boxed bento lunch. Today, the list is more elaborate: MP3 player, 3.2-megapixel camera, navigation system, digital TV tuner and Web browser - all squeezed into a palm-sized device that costs about the price of a good sushi meal.
Millions of Japanese also use cellphones to read novels, magazines and office files, to make credit card payments, watch hours of recorded television and even check body fat.
Over the past decade, consumers in the gizmo-loving nation have enjoyed a string of technological firsts. Japan pioneered the use of handsets to connect to the internet in 1999, download music (2002) and watch digital TV (2006). It was the first country to launch 3G wireless networks (2001), and is still one of the few to allow - since 2004 - mobile phones to be used as credit cards and train and bus passes.
Cellphone networks in Japan are so advanced that providers are struggling with problems the rest of the world has hardly considered - such as surging demand for high-bandwidth porn. Local operators are building next-generation networks that will give Japan's 92 million surfers even more bang for their recession-hit buck.
'People always tell me how jealous they are of Japanese cellphone technology when I go abroad,' says Tadayuki Yamada, a Tokyo office worker. 'I think we're pretty spoiled.'
However, such innovations have not prevented the market from slowing. Subscriptions are falling and, since peaking three years ago at 50 million, total handset sales by the 10 or so domestic manufacturers shrunk to 36 million last year, according to Tokyo-based IT research company MM.
