えいごで: The famously hot Japanese summer is now in full force. This period is easily recognised by the chirping of cicada’s, hot temperature and bouts of heavy rain caused by passing typhoons. Luckily, in Sendai temperatures are quite mild in comparison to West-Japan.

In Japan the feature-phones are still in heavy use. Japanese text input is surprisingly easy, provided that one has learned the a-i-u-e-o of the hiragana charts.

For kanji-mode, the shown hiragana (phonetic symbols) are:

a ka sa
ta na ha
ma ya ra

With on the *-button the dakuten and handakuten (modifiers).

Pressing on the buttons repeatedly switches between the a-i-u-e-o versions of the corresponding symbol. So if you want to type, for example, かぶき (kabuki) you press: 2666*22.

Special cases are the 8-button, wich only has ya-yu-yo and the 0-button, which has only wa-wo-n.

The most important button on this phone is in the lower right corner, which allows you to put it into manner (silent) mode.

Japanese: 日本のなつあついですよそしてあめたくさんふっている。

なつのあいだ、たくさんのももをたべる。きのう、ももとパスタつくった、つくりかた日本にならった。

日本にけいたのとくべつなボタンはマナーモードのだ。がいこくのでんわはマナーモードのボタンない。