SafetyText 0
Contradictions abound in Japan. For one, Japan is the micro-technology center of the world, at least when it comes to cell phones. It is simply impossible to purchase a cellular phone today without Japanese technology on the inside.
Such phones are all the rage in Japan. They are everywhere, of course, but more so here. And what is so contradictory about seeing nine year olds to eighty-nine years olds carting their precious <em>keitai</em> (lit. "mobile"), from teens on the subway, to businessmen in alleyways chatting on these ultraslim phones? For a country that prides itself on spearheading the micro-cellular world, this has got to be the least verbally communicative country in the world. Japan is renowned for its <em>unspoken</em> rules and communication. So I get a kick out of its cell phone bandwagon. It is just more <em>visually pronounced</em> here.
A rising problem involves telephone dating service abuses. Using e-mail and message boards, lots of young people are arranging to meet young folks over the phone. In a sad story a few years back, a young British girl working in a Tokyo hostess bar when she disappeared after telling a friend she was going for a drive to the ocean with a client. But no one knew exactly where she had gone — or with whom. Her <strong>dismembered</strong> body was found in a beachside cave in Misaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, on Feb. 9, 2001.
In this case, she didn't meet the man over the phone; she met him, presumably, in her bar. But here on the island where I live, other young women have died (though not dismembered) directly due to message boards available via one's telephone.
The British girl's father, Time Blackman, has recently started a service called SafetyText that he wish had been in place when his daughter was alive.
From the <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20040910f1.htm">article on Japan Times:</a>
<em>He reckoned that while young people are often reluctant to tell their parents who they are meeting, they may want someone to know some details in case something goes wrong and they don't return.
Their efforts resulted in the recent creation of SafetyText, which uses the Short Message Service facility on cell phones. Users send a message to SafetyText's main number, 63344, giving details of their meeting.
Once the user arrives home or at their destination, they then cancel the message so that no one receives it, thereby protecting their privacy.
However, should something untoward happen and they fail to cancel the alert, then the message is sent to the user's chosen buddy — usually a family member or close friend — at a time set in advance by the user.</em>