Fire off that last mail message real quick, Japanese students. You won’t be able to do that at school anymore.
It seems that Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology doesn’t want students to have their phones at school anymore. They will hand their decision down to schools and school boards as early as this month. Cell phone heads, it looks grim for you.
Forget the kids at school. They can go talk to each other face to face — that’ll be good for them. What’s really important are the Japanese entertainment implications. This will change the face of a good deal of stereotypical life in Japan. How often does a phone call or message at school advance the plot of their stories in entertainment? What’s going to happen to the phone flirting? How else will the tentacle monsters surprise school girls?
What are they going to do now? Are they going to have to go back to the carrier pigeon? Don’t tell me we have to go back to that note-in-a-shoe-locker thing again.