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Japan’s Shinkansen bullet trains to remove all onboard payphones

Before you hop on the Shinkansen, make sure you’ve got your ticket and a charged phone.

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The end of the pay phone? Japanese government considering getting rid of phone boxes

Let’s be real though — when was the last time you used one anyway?

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New Japanese smartphone prohibits users from taking naked selfies

Tone Mobile’s new phone won’t save photo data it thinks is “inappropriate.”

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You can send email from payphones in Japan?!? We try the technology trick that shocked the nation

How are you supposed to type a message without a keyboard or touch screen?

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Anime-style magic circle cordless charging pad is the coolest way ever to charge a phone【Video】

Japanese company’s gadget for summoning life force for your devices is awesome…but maybe too awesome to be real.

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Following powerful earthquake in northern Japan, all Hokkaido payphones are now free to use

There’s no need to pay to use payphones to let your family know you’re OK or tell response teams that you need help.

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Specially designed “Japanese public telephone” backpack has Twitter ringing with enthusiasm

Forget London phone booths, Japan’s green public telephones are the new trendy icon.

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Miyagi man arrested for calling employment office 159 times in a row without saying a single word

You’ll be comforted to know that he had a good reason, however.

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Spate of violence targets people walking while looking at their phones in Japanese train stations

Japanese train stations get the self-proclaimed “vigilante” heroes they neither need, nor want.

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Yamanote Line train temporarily suspended after carriage fills with smoke in Tokyo

According to reports, a mobile phone battery pack fire was the cause of the incident.

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Winter 2016 Cat Punch Gloves from Felissimo come with adorable new details

Whether you’re swiping at a mobile game or making a point, these cats keep their paws on your finger everywhere you go!

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Pokémon Go players can now keep phones charged with hand-made Poké Ball portable battery charger

Japanese gamers weigh in on the device, sharing their first impressions.

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This hotplate from IKEA Taiwan works only once diners surrender their smartphones【Video】

This customer experience is blowing up all over social media, or it would be if anyone could get to their cell phones.

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Can you spot what’s wrong with this picture? One young salaryman couldn’t

There’s a Japanese phrase, yutori sedai, that you’ll hear in just about any established company after the new hires start showing mid-spring. The term refers to people who’ve grown up in Japan’s modern, less strict educational system (which is still stricter than those in many other countries), and while yutori sedai literally translates as “relaxed generation,” it’s real meaning is closer to “damned kids today,” as it’s almost always used in a derogatory sense by an older worker who’s exasperated at a younger employee’s lack of proper manners, business acumen, or just plain common sense.

A lot of times, the people muttering under their breath about the yutori sedai do so out of a combination of stubbornly resisting change and convenient memory gaps that don’t include any of the many mistakes they made in their own youth, but this experienced salaryman may have a point, given that his yutori sedai coworker can’t seem to grasp the finer points of how to hang up a phone.

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Transform into a Disney character with these adorable, photography-boosting smartphone cases

Last week, we looked at some adorable liquid-filled Disney iPhone cases from smartphone accessory manufacturer Hamee that let you play with the cast of Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and Frozen. If you happen to suffer from acute aquaphobia, or just love Disney so much that you can’t look at the studio’s characters without wishing you yourself were one, though, Hamee has still got you covered, with these clever iPhone cases that will transform you into Mickey or his closest pals every time you hold up your phone to snap a picture.

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An early version of Samsung’s next Galaxy phone might have just leaked

We’ve been hearing for months that Samsung may be designing the Galaxy S6 “from scratch,” but now we might have a better idea of what that actually means. Blog Phone Arena published a photo that reportedly shows an early prototype of the Galaxy S6.

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Detached female hand iPhone cases are here to provide…emotional comfort?

As awesome as smartphones are, do they really help us to better communicate with one another? Sure, it’s nice to be able to instantly talk with anyone, regardless of whether you’re at home or out and about, but there are certain things we lose by doing it with the help of technology. Even as mobile phones’ audio and video capabilities continue to improve, they’re still not perfect. Without talking face-to-face, you can’t pick up on every facial expression, hear each subtle change in inflection, or reach out and hold someone’s hand should the conversation turn emotional or romantic.

Unless you’re using this iPhone case that’s an eerily detailed replica of a human hand.

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Smartphone GPS system lets you bring your favorite anime voices along for the ride

Almost none of the streets in Japan have names, and even when they do, civil planners are pretty haphazard about putting up signs to let you know what they are. As a result, it’s hard to get anywhere in a car without a GPS system guiding you.

But after enough time behind the wheel, you might find yourself getting bored of the default voice chirping out you to “make a right turn in 30 meters.” So if you’re feeling a little burned out on your navigation system, or nabi as it’s known in Japan, now might be the time to update it with the voice of Evangelion’s Asuka, Attack on Titan’s Arumin, or one of dozens of other available anime characters.

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English-learning smartphone app teaches Japanese students to say “I just took a dump”

While the English edition of RocketNews24 is primarily focused on Asia in general and Japan in particular, our Japanese-language sister site, Pouch, covers stories from around the world. Sometimes, the source information they work with is in English, so Pouch’s team members are always on the lookout for ways to brush up their language skills.

So we weren’t shocked to hear that one of Pouch’s writers, Marie, had recently gotten really into a new English-learning smartphone app. What did surprise us, though, was when we took a look at the phrases she was learning, including such nuggets as, “I just took a dump.”

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7 Reasons the iPhone 6 is a piece of junk (according to Japanese otaku)

Apple has officially announced the iPhone 6, and also its big-screen sibling, the iPhone 6 Plus. This is great news for technophiles who’d already started lining up for the new device before it was officially unveiled, but there’s one slice of the Japanese population that’s completely unimpressed: hard-core fans of idol singer video game and anime franchise Aikatsu! The otaku subset has compiled a list of seven reasons why, compared to one piece of Aikatsu! merchandise, the iPhone 6 is a piece of junk.

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