Seasonal nature hikes, for flower-viewing in the spring or hunting for wild mushrooms in the fall, are a common Japanese family activity. The service allows users to send up to 128 characters of text from their cellular phones to personal computers, pagers, and other mobile phones, without a modem or a connection to the Internet. All messages are sent to a J-Phone service center, then routed to their destination. The message service, and the retry function, are similar to services already being offered by other Japanese providers. This is an improvement over some messaging services, which accept only phonetic characters.
Special screens appear on holidays.
The cards can be purchased at major bookstores and over the Internet, from the BitCash site. The survey also reported interest in Microsoft's upcoming Windows 98 software, and a preference for Netscape's World Wide Web browser. Digit surveyed a random sampling of 281 people on the street and 1,022 people via the Internet. Computer owners in both surveys reported that company work and Internet use were their primary activities at the computer. Not surprisingly, when asked about their intentions for buying a computer in the future, current owners were willing to spend more than those who did not yet own a computer.